The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.

The person I miss most is the one I could have been.

Now that we have learned to fly in the air like birds and dive in the sea like fish, only one thing remains – to learn to live on earth like humans.

No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.

Islam is the best religion and Muslims are the worst followers.

The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.

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

There is always danger for those who are afraid.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

The sound body is the product of the sound mind.

Lack of money is the root of all evil.

A man who loses his money gains, at the least, experience, and sometimes, something better.

To be a champion you must live like one.

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means. There is no such thing in the country.

A day’s work is a day’s work, neither more nor less, and the man who does it needs a day’s sustenance, a night’s repose and due leisure, whether he be painter or ploughman.

The first prison I ever saw had inscribed on it ‘cease to do evil: learn to do well’; but as the inscription was on the outside, the prisoners could not read it.

One touch of Darwin makes the whole world kin.

Civilization is a disease produced by the practice of building societies with rotten material.

All problems are finally scientific problems.

A basis of physical science no more justifies dogmatism than a metaphysical basis does.

[Albert Einstein] is not challenging the fact of science; he is challenging the action of science. Not only is he challenging the action of science, but the action of science has surrendered to his challenge.

There are some men who are considered quite ugly, but who are more remarkable than pretty people. You often see that in artists.

Freedom, my good girl, means being able to count on how other people will behave.

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.

Life is a first draft… with no rewrite.

Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

Two things define you: Your patience when you have nothing and your attitude when you have everything.

Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby.

A miracle, my friend, is an event which creates faith.

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.

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

In an ugly and unhappy world, the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.

I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot.

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

Our lives are shaped not as much by our experiences as by our expectations.

The best way to get your point across is to entertain.

My reputation grows with every failure.

Decency is indecency’s conspiracy of silence.

A cigarette is a pinch of tobacco rolled in paper with fire at one end and a fool at the other.

God is on the side of the big battalions.

Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.    B

A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.

It is most unwise for people in love to marry.

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.

Newspaper: A device unable to distinguish between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization.

A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me, there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.

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

The longer I live, the more convinced am I that this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

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

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.

I am a typical Irishman; my family came from Yorkshire.

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich-something for nothing.

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

A doctor’s reputation is made by the number of eminent men who die under his care.

Yesterday is the past, tomorrow is the future, today is a gift – that’s why it’s called the present.

The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.

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

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.

Imagination is the beginning of creation.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

Words are only postage stamps delivering the object for you to unwrap.

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

There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough.

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

Those who understand evil pardon it.

My specialty is being right when other people are wrong.

Most people do not pray; they only beg.

No lie is too fantastic, no slander is too stale … for employment by the more reckless elements of the British press.

I can remember no time at which a page of print was not intelligible to me and can only suppose I was born literate.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

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

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

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

I’m only a beer teetotaller, not a champagne teetotaller.

I’d like to kill you, you selfish brute. Why didn’t you leave me where you picked me out of—in the gutter? You thank God it’s all over, and that now you can throw me back again there, do you?

The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.

Does it occur to you, that the girl has some feelings?

You have caused me to lose my temper: a thing that has hardly ever happened to me before.

It was a silly notion: the whole thing has been a bore.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

Life is not meant to be easy my child, but take courage: it can be delightful.

The whole problem with the world is the fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves, and wiser people are full of doubts.

The goal of an artist is to create the definitive work that cannot be surpassed.

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.

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

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

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

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

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

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny. They have only shifted it to another shoulder.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

The great secret is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls; in short, behaving as if you were in heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.

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

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

The power of accurate observation…is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.

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

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

Don’t wait for the right opportunity: create it.

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

Youth is wasted on the young.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Animals are my friends…and I don’t eat my friends.

You see things; you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

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

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

Start with the belief that your life can indeed be changed, and that you have the power to change it.

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

Write your Sad times in Sand, Write your Good times in Stone.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.

The play was a great success, but audience was a dismal failure.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.