It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind.
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
It is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.[about chess]
It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.
Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.
If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.
If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people’s opinions will rush in from all quarters.
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything left for us to do.
If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a foot rule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved.