If all feeling for grace and beauty were not extinguished in the mass of mankind at the actual moment, such a method of locomotion as cycling could never have found acceptance; no man or woman with the slightest aesthetic sense could assume the ludicrous position necessary for it.

Hypocrites weep, and you cannot tell their tears from those of saints; but no bad man ever laughed sweetly yet.

Could we see when and where we are to meet again, we would be more tender when we bid our friends goodbye.

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

I have known men who have been sold and bought a hundred times, who have only got very fat and very comfortable in the process of exchange.

Friendship needs to be rooted in respect, but love can live upon itself alone

Genius scorns the power of gold: it is wrong. Gold is the war-scythe on its chariot, which mows down the millions of its foes, and gives free passage to the sun-coursers with which it leaves those heavenly fields of light for the gross battlefields of earth.