I lay my eternal curse on whomsoever shall now or at any time hereafter make schoolbooks of my works and make me hated as Shakespeare is hated. My plays were not designed as instruments of torture. All the schools that lust after them get this answer, and will never get any other.

You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself.

Civilization is a disease produced by the practice of building societies with rotten material.

The ability to make witty observations is commonly refered to as "cynism" by people who lack it.

The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.

Bourgeois morality is largely a system of making cheap virtues a cloak for expensive vices.

There is a disease to which plays as well as men become liable with advancing years. In men it is called doting, in plays dating.The more topical the play the more it dates.