We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us. Ideas of the Stone Age exist side by side with the latest scientific thought. Only a fraction of mankind has emerged from the Dark Ages, and in the most lucid brains, as Logan Pearsall Smith has said, we come upon nests of woolly caterpillars. Seemingly sane men entrust their wealth to stargazers and their health to witch doctors. Giant planes throb through the stratosphere, but half their passengers are wearing magic amulets and are protected from harm by voodoo incantations. Hotels boast of express elevators and a telephone in every room, but omit thirteen from all floor and room numbers lest their guests be ill at ease.
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There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good income is of no avail.
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A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat.
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Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.
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Don't tell your friends their social faults they will cure the fault and never forgive you.
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It is through the cracks in our brains that ecstasy creeps in.
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I cannot forgive my friends for dying I do not find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.
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Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so jointed that they cannot be separated often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them.
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Then I though of reading -- the nice and subtle happiness of reading ... this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.
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The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of the blood.
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An improper mind is a perpetual feast.
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Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations he is only trying on one face after another to find his own.
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Solvency is entirely a matter of temperament and not of income.
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What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?
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Almost all reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.
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How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares if there seemed any danger of their coming true
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The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection, even though it consist in nothing more than in the pounding of an old piano, is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star.
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Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.
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That we should practice what we preach is generally admitted; but anyone who preaches what he and his hearers practice must incur the gravest moral disapprobation.
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All Reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.
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There is more felicity on the far side of baldness than young men can possibly imagine.
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How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares if there seemed any danger of their coming true!
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All my life, as down an abyss without a bottom. I have been pouring van loads of information into that vacancy of oblivion I call my mind.
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Whiskey has killed more men than bullets, but most men would rather be full of whiskey than bullets.
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We need two kinds of acquaintances, one to complain to, while to the others we boast.
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What joy can the years bring half so sweet as the unhappiness they've taken away?
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People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
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If you are losing your leisure, look out You are losing your soul.
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It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.
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There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
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