The mind moves by instincts, associations and premonitions and not by fixed dates or completed processes. Action and reaction will occur simultaneously: or the cause actually be found after the effect. Errors will be resisted before they have been properly promulgated: notions will be first defined long after they are dead.

An event is not any more intrinsically intelligible or unintelligible because of the pace at which it moves. For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow miracle would be just as incredible as a swift one. The Greek witch may have turned sailors to swine with a stroke of the wand. But to see a naval gentleman of our acquaintance looking a little more like a pig every day, till he ended with four trotters and a curly tail, would not be any more soothing. It might be rather more creepy and uncanny.

Ivory may not be so white as snow, but the whole Arctic continent does not make ivory black.

What a glorious garden of wonders the lights of Broadway would be to anyone lucky enough to be unable to read.

Sticking to one woman is a small price to pay for so much as having seen one woman.

Nine times out of ten it is the coarse word that condemns an evil, and the refined word that excuses it.

Is there anyone... who will maintain that the Party System could have been created by people particularly fond of truth?