Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!

To toil for a hard master is bitter, but to have no master to toil for is more bitter still.

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.

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

Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect.

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company.