It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of.

A man should have any number of little aims about which he should be conscious and for which he should have names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness concerning the main aim of his life.

Youth is like spring, an over praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.

How often do we not see children ruined through the virtues, real or supposed, of their parents?

I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific bigwigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heave bricks into the middle of them.

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

He is greatest who is most often in men's good thoughts.