In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers.

Love your enemy, it will scare the hell out of them.

To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else -- these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.

The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.

Reputation is a hall-mark: it can remove doubt from pure silver, and it can also make the plated article pass for pure.

Human pride is not worthwhile; there is always something lying in wait to take the wind out of it.