He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of charity to admire a pelican.

The coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church

I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

It seems a pity that psychology has destroyed all our knowledge of human nature.

The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.