I have lived to see that being seventeen is no protection against becoming seventy, but to know this needs the experience of a lifetime, for no imagination copes with it.

Contrast is the dramatist's method.

Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know: for we have new worlds here.

It was the hour when gauze-winged insects are born that only live for a day.

Then I perceived, what I had never thought, that all these staring houses were not alike, but different one from another, because they held different dreams.

It has always struck me that one of the readiest ways of estimating a country's regard for law is to notice what arms the officers of the law are carrying: in England it is little batons, in France swords, in many countries revolvers, and in Russia the police used to have artillery.

A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large and full of wonders.