The arguments for immortality, weak when you take them one by one, are no more cogent when you take them together... For my part, I cannot see how consciousness can persist when its physical basis has been destroyed, and I am too sure of the interconnection of my body and my mind to think that any survival of my my consciousness apart from my body would be in any sense a survival of myself.

Dullness is the first requisite of a good husband.

They say a woman always remembers her first lover with affection; but perhaps she does not always remember him.

The audience is a very curious animal. It is shrewd rather than intelligent. Its mental capacity is less than that of its most intellectual members.

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.

I promised myself that if ever I had some money that I would savor a cigar each day after lunch and dinner. This is the only resolution of my youth that I have kept, and the only realized ambition which has not brought disillusion.

Has it occurred to you that transmigration is at once an explanation and a justification of the evil of the world? If the evils we suffer are the result of sins committed in our past lives, we can bear them with resignation and hope that if in this one we strive toward virtue out future lives will be less afflicted.