The strangest whim has seized me ... After all I think I will not hang myself today.

Americans are a very backward people, with all the real virtues of a backward people; the patriarchal simplicity and human dignity of a democracy, and a respect for labor uncorrupted by cynicism.

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.

There should be a burnished tablet let into the ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton cheese, and survived.

It is the decisive people who have become civilised; it is the indecisive, otherwise called the higher sceptics, or the idealistic doubters, who have remained barbarians.

I represent the jolly mass of mankind. I am the happy and reckless Christian.

A nation that has nothing but its amusements will not be amused for long.