All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.
Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.
There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness.
When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.
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.
Life is not an exact science, it is an art.
If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.
If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence.
Be virtuous and you will be vicious.
Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.
Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.
Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.
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.
If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.
The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.