However good you may be you have faults; however dull you may be you can find out what some of them are, and however slight they may be you had better make some - not too painful, but patient efforts to get rid of them.

The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not before them.

You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm - we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish - ourselves who consume: we are the mildew, and the flame.

I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.

No one can become rich by the efforts of only their toil, but only by the discovery of some method of taxing the labor of others.

A man is born an artist as a hippopotamus is born a hippopotamus; and you can no more make yourself one than you can make yourself a giraffe.

If you want knowledge, you must toil for it; if food, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it: toil is the law.