The banging and slamming and booming and crashing were something beyond belief. [On Lohengrin]

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

It is human life. We are blown upon the world; we float buoyantly upon the summer air a little while, complacently showing off our grace of form and our dainty iridescent colors; then we vanish with a little puff, leaving nothing behind but a memory - and sometimes not even that. I suppose that at those solemn times when we wake in the deeps of the night and reflect, there is not one of us who is not willing to confess that he is really only a soap-bubble, and as little worth the making.

If there was two birds sitting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first.

It is noble to teach oneself; it is still nobler to teach others.

Make your vacation your vocation.

In religion, India is the only millionaire... the One land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.