When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

What is wrong with the prosaic Englishman is what is wrong with the prosaic men of all countries: stupidity.

Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

My father must have had some elementary education for he could read and write and keep accounts inaccurately

The theory that music has a depraving effect on morals has now been abandoned to the old women of both sexes.

A vegetarian is not a person who lives on vegetables, any more than a Catholic is a person who lives on cats.

It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible, and a man's to keep unmarried as long as he can.

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

A book is like a child: it is easier to bring it into the world than to control it when it is launched there.

It is the highest creatures who take the longest to mature, and are the most helpless during their immaturity.

O Lord! I don't know which is the worst of the country, the walking or the sitting at home with nothing to do.

It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.

The great secret...is not having bad manners or good manners...but having the same manner for all human souls.

Everybody who does not live in a prostitute's bed and on a diet of cocaine snow is called an ascetic nowadays.

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

We educate one another; and we cannot do this if half of us consider the other half not good enough to talk to.

The test to which all methods of treatment are finally brought is whether they are lucrative to doctors or not.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.

Well, sir, you never can tell. That's a principle in life with me, sir, if you'll excuse my having such a thing.

I don't know if there are men on the moon, but if there are they must be using the earth as their lunatic asylum

I can think of no other edifice constructed by man as altruistic as a lighthouse. They were built only to serve.

It is assumed that the woman must wait, motionless, until she is wooed. That is how the spider waits for the fly.

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

If any religion had a chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it could be Islam.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Of the two lots, the woman's lot of perpetual motherhood, and the man's of perpetual babyhood, I prefer the man's.

Let wife and child perish, and lay bricks for your last crust, rather than part with an iota of your [copy]rights.

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

The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.

Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough.

You can rave about Stravinsky without the slightest risk of being classified as a lunatic by the next generation .

Caesar was a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

Most married couples spend the whole day apart, the woman in the house, the man in the office or study or workshop.

I prefer the man who calls his nonsense a mystery to him who who pretends it is a weighed, measured, analyzed fact.

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them.

A married man forms married habits and becomes dependent on marriage just as a sailor becomes dependent on the sea.

The British churchgoer prefers a severe preacher because he thinks a few home truths will do his neighbors no harm.

I can't turn your soul on. Leave me those feelings; and you can take away the voice and the face. They are not you.

Thus, I blush to add, you can not be a philosopher and a good man, though you may be a philosopher and a great one.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

Life is a disease; and the only difference between on man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives.

When God created man and woman, he did not take a patent. That's why any imbecile has been able to do so ever since.

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