A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.

The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men – from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.

Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.

Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.

Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way – and the fools know it.

A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.

Apology is only egotism wrong side out.

A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!

Don’t be ‘consistent‘, but be simply true.

To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.

Memory is a net: one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook, but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.

The mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts.

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.

Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.

I like children; I like ’em, and I respect ’em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them.

Have the courage to act instead of react.

A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened.

Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.

Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.

Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.

Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.

Why can’t somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks?

A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.

Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else – very rarely to those who say to themselves, ‘Go to, now, let us be a celebrated individual!’.

The world’s great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.

Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.

But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.

Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.

To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.

Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.

Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer.