Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

An optimist will tell you the glass is half-full; the pessimist, half-empty; and the engineer will tell you the glass is twice the size it needs to be.

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

Most people are other people.

There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.

A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.