I can generally bear the separation but I don't like the leave-taking.
Books should be tried by a judge and jury as though they were crimes.
I keep my books at the British Museum and at Mudies.
People are lucky and unlucky ... according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.
Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
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.
The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.
It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable grounds.
One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten and to leave off fighting at once.
The advantage of doing one's praising to oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.
A lawyer's dream of heaven - every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.
Neither have they hearts to stay Nor wit enough to run away.
I have never written on any subject unless I believed that the authorities on it were hopelessly wrong.
Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order.
All animals except man know that the principle business of life is to enjoy it.
Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.