Human life--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.

We live, I regret to say, in an age of Big Data hype.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

One has a right to judge a man by the effect he has over his friends.

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. living, as you all do, on other and by them, you need at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season.