More than half of modern culture depends upon what one shouldn't read.

JACK Your duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNON My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.

Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleance me in the great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.

The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.

Before Turner there was no fog in London.

He hadn’t a single redeeming vice.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.