Every generalization is dangerous, especially this one.

A policeman in plain clothes is a man; in his uniform he is ten. Clothes and title are the most potent thing, the most formidable influence, in the earth. They move the human race to willing and spontaneous respect for the judge, the general, the admiral, the bishop, the ambassador, the frivolous earl, the idiot duke, the sultan, the king, the emperor. No great title is efficient without clothes to support it.

To be vested with enormous authority is a fine thing; but to have the on-looking world consent to it is finer.

Surely the ass who invented the first religion ought to be the first ass damned

Perhaps no poet is a conscious plagiarist, but there seems to be warrant for suspecting that there is no poet who is not at one time or another an unconscious one.

There is no urge so great as for one man to edit another man's work.

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