"As long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it."

"Better keep yourself clean and bright. You are the window through which you must see the world."

"I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence."

"The worst sin... is... to be indifferent."

"The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong."

"We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us."

"Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him."

"Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed."

"The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react."

"You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub."

"Very few people can afford to be poor."

"No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious."

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

"Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious."

"I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake."

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."

"Most people do not pray; they only beg."

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

"The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic."

"The love of economy is the root of all virtue."

"Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no sincerer love than the love of food."

"Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time."

"We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience."

"We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be."

"Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance."

"Virtue is insufficient temptation."

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

"England and America are two countries separated by the same language."

"A man never tells you anything until you contradict him."

"Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability."

"I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me."

"General consultant to mankind."

"A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold."

"The only secrets are the secrets that keep themselves."

"Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him."

"Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them."

"Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?"

"It's easier to replace a dead man than a good picture."

"The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life."

"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!"

"The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them."

"A man of great common sense and good taste -- meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage."

"A man who has no office to go to -- I don't care who he is -- is a trial of which you can have no conception."

"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education"

"A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes."

"All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it."

"An index is a great leveller."

"Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself."

"He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage."

"I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy."