Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.

Wit is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it.

If the common man in the past had a grave respect for property, it may conceivably have been because he sometimes had some of his own.

Very few reputations are gained by unsullied virtue.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

"The Universe repeats itself, with the possible exception of history." Of all earthly studies history is the only one that does not repeat itself. ... Astronomy repeats itself; botany repeats itself; trigonometry repeats itself; mechanics repeats itself; compound long division repeats itself. Every sum if worked out in the same way at any time will bring out the same answer. ... A great many moderns say that history is a science; if so it occupies a solitary and splendid elevation among the sciences; it is the only science the conclusions of which are always wrong.