In the arts of life main invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine. ... There is nothing in Man's industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons.

When you want to put something into your part that is not in the play, you must ask the author-or some other author-to lead up to the interpolation for you. Never forget that the effect of a line may depend not on its delivery, but on something said earlier in the play, either by somebody else or by yourself, and that if you change it, it may be necessary to change the whole first act as well.

You sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanliness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly.

God is on the side of the big battalions.

Those who admire modern civilization usually identify it with the steam engine and the electric telegraph.

My rank is the highest known in Switzerland: I'm a free citizen.

Absolute honesty is as absurd an abstraction as an absolute temperature or an absolute value.