I respect the truth too much to drag it out on every occasion.

If a man stopped me in the street and demanded of me my watch, I should refuse to give it to him. If he threatened to take it by force, I feel I should, though not a fighting man, do my best to protect it. If, on the other hand, he should assert his intention of trying to obtain it by means of an action in any court of law, I should take it out of my pocket and hand it to him, and think I had got off cheaply.

Conceit is the finest armour a man can wear.

Ambition is only vanity ennobled.

We drink [to] one another's health and spoil our own.

I can't sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can't help it.

If he were a man of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it usually sent mad.