Social questions are too sectional, too topical, too temporal to move a man to the mighty effort which is needed to produce greatpoetry. Prison reform may nerve Charles Reade to produce an effective and businesslike prose melodrama; but it could never produce Hamlet, Faust, or Peer Gynt.

Such poverty as we have today in all our great cities degrades the poor, and infects with its degradation the whole neighborhood in which they live. And whatever can degrade a neighborhood can degrade a country and a continent and finally the whole civilized world, which is only a large neighborhood.

Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

Don't waste time collecting other people's autographs; rather devote it to making your own autograph worth collecting.

Go anywhere in England where there are natural wholesome, contented and really nice English people; and what do you find? That the stables are the real centre of the household.

I make a fortune from criticizing the policy of the government, and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep it going.

Assassination on the scaffold is the worst form of assassination.