He who has never hoped can never despair.

Without art the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

"Do you know what a pessimist is?" "A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it."

We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.

Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the...

You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.

You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

When you prevent me from doing anything I want to do, that is persecution; but when I prevent you from doing anything you want to do, that is law, order and morals.