Old age is fifteen years older than I am.

Imitation is a necessity of human nature.

Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words.

Be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out.

To be civilized is to be potentially master of all possible ideas, and that means that one has got beyond being shocked, although one preserves one's own moral aesthetic preferences.

I should like to see any kind of man, distinguishable from a gorilla, that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of.

Three generations of imbeciles are enough.