So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong.

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

The real essence of work is concentrated energy.

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.

Business is really more agreeable than pleasure; it interests the whole mind, the aggregate nature of man more continuously, and more deeply. But it does not look as if it did.

The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people.

The great pleasure of life is doing for pleasure things I do not like to do.