Pretty much all law consists in forbidding men to do something that they want to do.

We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly existence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the little while we are to be confined in it.

We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.

Imitation is a necessity of human nature.

But the moment you turn a corner you see another straight stretch ahead and there comes some further challenge to your ambition.

Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.

The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.