The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.

Life is one long process of getting tired.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.

The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.

To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.

For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.

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

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.

All truth is not to be told at all times.

Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.

Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers.

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.

The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

The history of art is the history of revivals.

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.

An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.

Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.

Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.

To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.

The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.

If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.

Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.

What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.

From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.

If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.

There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.

No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.