Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things.

Oh, how I vainly wished to the bearded man in the sky that I was Neapolitan. Why? So I could bring in a fine Neapolitan pest control to help with Queensberry's problem before it gets out of hand.

I don't like Switzerland; it has produced nothing but theologians and waiters.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

Young men want to be faithful, and are not. Old men want to be faithless, and cannot.

It's not hard to get the ideas when they come. They just come... it's painful waiting for them.

Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good.