We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!
We must reform society before we can reform ourselves.
We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.
We don’t bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don’t dress well and we’ve no manners.
We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.
We are made wise not by the recollections of our past, but by the responsibilities of our future.
Vulgarity is a necessary part of a complete author’s equipment; and the clown is sometimes the best part of the circus.
Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.
Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
There is the eternal war between those who are in the world for what they can get out of it and those who are in the world to make it a better place for everybody to live in.