To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people.

Every one, even the richest and most munificent of men, pays much by cheque more light-heartedly than he pays little in specie.

Great men are but life-sized. Most of them, indeed, are rather short.

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.

Every kind of writing is hypocritical.

Undergraduates owe their happiness chiefly to the consciousness that they are no longer at school. The nonsense which was knocked out of them at school is all put gently back at Oxford or Cambridge.

Beauty and the lust for learning have yet to be allied.