Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.

Optimist: day-dreamer in his small clothes.

But it was ever thus, all through my life: whenever I have diverged from custom and principle and uttered a truth, the rule has been that the hearer hadn't strength of mind enough to believe it.

...there isn't often anything in Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as acting.

The timid man yearns for full value and demands a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par.

One gains at least two to three times more experience grabbing the tiger by the tail than reading about it in a book.

I hate editors, for they make me abandon a lot of perfectly good English words.