Bernard Quotes

Heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation

Youth is wasted on the young.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?

The most distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they grow older.

The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.

[Man] progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.

How can she? She's incapable of understanding anything. Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it?

You don't stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.

How we lavish our money and worship on Shakespeare without in the least knowing why!

You think, because you have a purpose, Nature must have one. You might as well expect it to have fingers and toes because you do.

It is easy-terribly easy-to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to to break a man's spirit is Devil's work.

My dear: in this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

Loyalty in a critic is corruption.

I have an acute sense of delicacy. Naturally I am prejudiced in favour of virtue.("The Accursed Cordonnier")

Some donkeys have amazing luck.

A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself.

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.

Well, I've known over thirty men who've found out how to cure consumption. Why do people go on dying of it, Colly? Devilment I suppose!

The solid earth sways like the treacherous sea beneath the feet of men and spirits alike when the innocent are slain in the name of law, and their wrongs are undone by slandering the pure of heart.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.

You have learned something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.

My opportunities were still there nay they multiplied tenfold but the strength and youth to cope with them began to fail and to need eking out with the shifty cunning of experience.

Without art the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

Peace is not only better than war but infinitely more arduous.

I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

All professions are a conspiracy against the country.

When people shake their heads because we are living in a restless age ask them how they would like to life in a stationary one and do without change.

Progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Self-denial is not a virtue it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.

She had lost the art of conversation but not unfortunately the power of speech.

You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard but by attacking and getting well hammered yourself.

You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard but by attacking and getting well-hammered yourself.

As long as I have a want I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

You can lose a man like that by your own death but not by his.

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.

I am only a beer teetotaller not a champagne teetotaller.

It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.

fights you on patriotic principles he robs you on business principles he enslaves you on imperial principles.

Men are wise in proportion not to their experience but to their capacity for experience.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

Fashions after all are only induced epidemics.

What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do.

Use your health even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die do not outlive yourself.

Give a man health and a course to steer and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

The art of government is the organization of idolatry.