More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the [biblical] texts that authorised them remain.

Knighterrantry is a most chuckleheaded trade, and it is tedious hard work, too, but I begin to see that there is money in it, after all, if you have luck. Not that I would ever engage in it, as a business, for I wouldn't. No sound and legitimate business can be established on a basis of speculation. A successful whirl in the knighterrantry line--now what is it when you blow away the nonsense and come down to the cold facts? It's just a corner in pork, that's all.

I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher.

Now he found out a new thing--namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.

Learn from the mistakes of others - you won't live long enough to make them all yourself. He's opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer him the position.

For all the talk you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instinct is worth forty of it for real unerringness.

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.