there is no doubt that the garrulous bore is the most maddening creature to be shut up with for any length of time, on the wide earth. ... As a matter of fact, I have sometimes wondered if these impulsive, perfectly meaningless murders of which one has read at times, can have come about through one party babbling on endlessly - just once too often - when the other longed to be left in peace.

you may call a person vain, and they will smile; you may call them immoral, and they may even feel flattered - but call them narrow-minded and they have done with you.

though money is a fine servant, as a god, it does seem to develop all the evil qualities of the slave seated between the cherubim.

True depression is a terribly real thing. Some of the noblest men and women in the world have been prone to it ... They may have no reason for feeling more unhappy at that particular period than at any other. Their worldly circumstances may be just what they have been for a long time past, and perfectly satisfactory. But there suddenly closes down on them a fog of the mind which exaggerates and distorts everything.

Though the worship of riches is an old religion, there has never been a danger that it might become the sole religion. And yet that is what is surely going to happen in the world.

... nothing, of course, is ever so strange as love to the one who is not a lover.

one of the greatest hindrances to happiness in the present day is our tendency to standardize our conception of it.