Far better, and more cheerfully, I could dispense with some part of the downright necessaries of life, than with certain circumstances of elegance and propriety in the daily habits of using them.

Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.

In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.

It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.

Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.

All that is literature seeks to communicate power

Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium!

There is a necessity for a regulating discipline of exercise that, whilst evoking the human energies, will not suffer them to be wasted.

Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.

Fierce sectarianism breeds fierce latitudinarianism.

Kings should disdain to die, and only disappear.

Wit is the lowest form of humor.

Old age is an insult. It's like being smacked.

The public totally discounts low-probability high-consequence events. The individual says, it's not going to be this plane, this bus, this time.

While it takes at least two to reconcile, it only takes one to forgive.

The most prominent place in hell is reserved for those who are neutral on the great issues of life.

One can be a soldier without dying and a lover without sighing.

The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers.

Lasting solutions to many social problems will be found only as we each learn to say, 'I am society'.

Economy, the poor man's mint.

Poor and afflicted and oppressed people have faces, and we are required to look squarely into them. We can't love what we won't experience.