“Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds”

“I suppose in reality not a leaf goes yellow in autumn without ceasing to care about its sap and making the parent tree very uncomfortable by long growling and grumbling - but surely nature might find some less irritating way of carrying on business if she would give her mind to it. Why should the generations overlap one another at all? Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the sphex wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow, but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks before it began to live consciously on its own account?”

“It stands to reason that he who would cure a moral ailment must be practically acquainted with it in all its bearings.”

“All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income”

“Truth might be heroic, but it was not within the range of practical domestic politics.”

“Life is one long process of getting tired.”

“Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime”