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

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it, it would be hell on Earth.

A man learns to skate by staggering about making a fool of himself; indeed, he progresses in all things by making a fool of himself.

A man ought to be able to be fond of his wife without making a fool of himself about her.

A pessimist thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.

Alcohol is the anaesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

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

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

Beauty is all very well at first sight, but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will use it.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read books except the books that nobody reads.

Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.

Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it.

Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

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

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

Do not try to live forever, you will not succeed.

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

Has fear ever held a man back from anything he really wanted?

Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.

He who has never hoped can never despair.

Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

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

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.

If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.

If you go to Heaven without being naturally qualified for it, you will not enjoy yourself there.

It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible, and a man's to keep unmarried for as long as he can.

In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

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

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

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

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.

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

The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed but that he cannot believe anyone else.

The most anxious man in a prison is the warden.

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.

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

The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

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

What God hath joined together no man shall put asunder; God will take care of that.

When man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

Whilst we have prisons it matters little who occupies the cells.

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

Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.