Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
It has been said that though God cannot alter the past historians can - it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.
Our latest moment is always our supreme moment. Five minutes delay in dinner now is more important than a great sorrow ten years gone.
People care more about being thought to have good taste than about being thought either good clever or amiable.
The foundations which we would dig about and find are within us like the Kingdom of Heaven rather than without.
I reckon being ill is one of the greatest pleasures of life provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.
We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
Whatso'er we perpetrate We do but row we are steered by fate.
The world is naturally averse to all truth it sees or hears but swallows nonsense and a lie with greediness and gluttony.
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.
To himself everyone is immortal he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.
To give pain is the tyranny to make happy, the true empire of beauty.
The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.
The history of art is the history of revivals.
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.
An apology for the Devil - it must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Faith is a kind of betting or speculation.
Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.
Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.
A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.