People expect too much of one year and too little of ten.

Laws, religions, creeds, and systems of ethics, instead of making society better than its best unit, make it worse than its average unit, because they are never up to date.

The early Christian rules of life were not made to last, because the early Christians did not believe that the world itself was going to last.

Orchestras only need to be sworn at, and a German is consequently at an advantage with them, as English profanity, except in America, has not gone beyond a limited technology of perdition.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

Every child has a right to its own bent. . . . It has a right to find its own way and go its own way, whether that way seems wise or foolish to others, exactly as an adult has. It has a right to privacy as to its own doings and its own affairs as much as if it were its own father.

The lesson intended by an author is hardly ever the lesson the world chooses to learn from his book.