A sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience.

Some of us cannot be optimists, but all of us can be bigamists

I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide.

There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it.

If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be — a Christian.

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.

A banker is somebody who lends you an umbrella & takes it away as soon as it starts raining.