“If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine.”

“A man who has spent most of his adult life trying out a series of patent medicines is always an optimist.”

“...there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:"He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.”

“No one so dislikes being punished unjustly as the person who might have been punished justly on scores of previous occasions, if he had only been found out.”

“No, I am quite content with you, Bertie. By the way, I do dislike that name Bertie. I think I shall call you Harold. Yes, I am perfectly satisfied with you. You have many faults, of course. I shall be pointing some of them out when I am at leisure.”

“He was a Frenchman, a melancholy-looking man. His aspect was that of one who has been looking for the leak in a gas pipe with a lighted candle.”

“[He] saw that a peculiar expression had come into his nephew's face; an expression a little like that of a young hindu fakir who having settled himself on his first bed of spikes is beginning to wish that he had chosen one of the easier religions.”