Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
Samuel Butler
God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.
Life is one long process of getting tired.
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
Life is not an exact science, it is an art.
A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.
The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.
In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
All truth is not to be told at all times.
It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
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.
A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.
If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
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 a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
The history of art is the history of revivals.
It is tact that is golden, not silence.
Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.
You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
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.
Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.
