A man cannot deserve adventures; he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs.

I despise Birth-Control first because it is ... an entirely meaningless word; and is used so as to curry favour even with those who would first recoil from its real meaning. The proceeding these quack doctors recommend does not control any birth.

It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.

Pride consists in a man making his personality the only test, instead of making truth the test. The sceptic feels himself too large to measure life by the largest things; and ends by measuring it by the smallest thing of all.

Every work of art has one indispensable mark ... the center of it is simple, however much the fulfillment may be complicated.

A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it.

A crown of roses is also a crown of thorns.