Marriages would in general be as happy and often more so if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor.

Cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

Come what may and hell to pay.

As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it, above all, provided that it consents to be dead. If it insists on being alive, we attack it, and we try to kill it.

To be black in America is a wild and endless assault on the senses. You can spend every day fighting off your spiritual and intellectual extinction.

My aim is just to make good music every single time.

Where there is oppression, there will be resistance.

I understand America.

There are ways of dying that don't end in funerals. Types of death you can't smell.

I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.

I'm sure I have a lot to atone for, if there is a judgment day. It's gonna be a long list for me. It goes right up until I was about 18 and then I sort of straightened out.

Printers shall be liable to legal prosecution for printing and publishing false facts injurious to the party prosecuting: but they shall be under no other restraint.