Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another.

I must have been an insufferable child; all children are.

An English army led by an Irish general: that might be a match for a French army led by an Italian general.

As well consult a butcher on the value of vegetarianism as a doctor on the worth of vaccination.

In the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat, for which they had at least the evidence of their senses: we believe it to be round, not because as many as 1 percent of us could give physical reasons for so quaint a belief, but because modern science has convinced us that nothing that is obvious is true, and that everything that is magical, improbable, extraordinary, gigantic, microscopic, heartless, or outrageous is scientific.

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do.

Nobody can live in society without conventions. The reason why sensible people are as conventional as they can bear to be is that conventionality saves so much time and thought and trouble and social friction of one sort or another that it leaves them much more leisure time for freedom than unconventionality does.