Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.
Property is organized robbery.
The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.
I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.
More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage stop to pray before cutting his throat.
Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.
The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.
The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.
Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?
Good sense is both the first principal and the parent source of good writing.
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.
I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.
The majority have no other reason for their opinions than that they are the fashion.
Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he does not.
All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.
There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.
Opportunity makes a thief.
We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.
I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
