The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea.

A good joke is the closest thing we have to divine revelation.

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.

Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.

I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.

When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any.

Gratitude produced the most purely joyful moments that have been known to man.