Oh, why will parents always appear at the wrong time? Some extraordinary mistake in nature, I suppose.

Society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realize what it has done. When the man's punishment is over, it leaves him to himself; that is to say, it abandons him at the very moment when its highest duty towards him begins.

Two men look out a window. One sees mud, the other sees the stars.

Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood.

Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They’re the only things we can pay.

The Americans are identical to the British in all respects except, of course, language.

How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless." "Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them." "I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.