I want to be all used up when I die.

There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports his king on loyal principles and cuts off his king's head on republican principles.

My way of joking is to tell the truth

Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.

A serious illness or a death advertises the doctor exactly as a hanging advertises the barrister who defended the person hanged.

In the right key one can say anything. In the wrong key, nothing: the only delicate part is the establishment of the key.

Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.