The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and have it found out by accident.

The measure of choosing well, is, whether a man likes and finds good in what he has chosen.

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.

I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.

The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.

Credulity is the man’s weakness, but the child’s strength.

I could never hate anyone I knew.

The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one’s soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive – you are leaking.

He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.

A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog’s ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.

A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.

The beggar wears all colors fearing none.

New Year’s Day is every man’s birthday.

To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives.

I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father’s religion, if they can find out what it is.

Nothing puzzles me more than the time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less.

The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.

My theory is to enjoy life, but the practice is against it.

The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.

Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.

I’d like to grow very old as slowly as possible.

Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.

Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected.

For thy sake, tobacco, I would do anything but die.

Pain is life – the sharper, the more evidence of life.

A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.

The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and have it found out by accident.

My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.

Asparagus inspires gentle thoughts.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.

Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.

Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing.

The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend.

I love to lose myself in other men’s minds.

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment.

It is good to love the unknown.

I have had playmates, I have had companions; In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days – All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.

She unbent her mind afterwards – over a book.

Shakespeare is one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book.

Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.

We grow gray in our spirit long before we grow gray in our hair.

Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.

Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever.

We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself.