... in no part of the world is genteel visiting founded on esteem, in the absence of suitable furniture and complete dinner-service.

What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.

Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves: there are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged to sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same incongruous manner.

The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots.

Life is like our game at whist ... I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it.

The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.