My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.

I have often argued that a poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. I begin to suspect that there may be some truth in it.

Only to often on meeting scientific men, even those of genuine distiction, one finds that they are dull fellows and very stupid. They know one thing to excess; they know nothing else. Pursuing facts too doggedly and unimaginatively, they miss all the charming things that are not facts. ... Too much learning, like too little learning, is an unpleasant and dangerous thing.

You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.

Of learned men, the clergy show the lowest development of professional ethics. Any pastor is free to cadge customers from the divines of rival sects, and to denounce the divines themselves as theological quacks.

Wife: a former sweetheart.

There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionaries in every pot.