A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

For Pastrasche was their alpha and omega; their treasury and granary; their store of gold and wand of wealth; their bread-winner and minister; their only friend and comforter. ... Pastrasche was their dog.

Men are always optimists when they look inwards, and pessimists when they look round them.

Most crimes are sanctioned in some form or other when they take grand names.

Power is sweet, and when you are a little clerk you love its sweetness quite as much as if you were an emperor, and maybe you love it a good deal more.

you have not a boat of your own, that is just it; that is what women always suffer from; they have to steer, but the craft is some one else's, and the haul too.

Indifference is the invincible grant of the world.