“I have always been of opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.”

“Indeed I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do.”

“I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.”

“My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest.”

“Yet in opinions look not always back,--Your wake is nothing, mind the coming track;Leave what you've done for what you have to do;Don't be "consistent," but be simply true.”

“Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a version of it through a desiccated question, and then will submerge it in a Niagara of similar opinions, and convert them into--what else?--another piece of news. Thus we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing.”