My opportunities were still there, nay, they multiplied tenfold; but the strength and youth to cope with them began to fail, and to need eking out with the shifty cunning of experience.
In truth , mankind cannot be saved from without, by schoolmasters or any other sort of masters: it can only be lamed and enslaved by them. It is said that if you wash a cat it will never again wash itself. This may or may not be true : what is certain is that if you teach a man anything he will never learn it; and if you cure him of a disease he will be unable to cure himself the next time it attacks him.
Pothinus: "Is it possible that Caesar, the conqueror of the world, has time to occupy himself with such a trifle as our taxes?" Caesar: "My friend, taxes are the chief business of a conqueror of the world.
The medical profession (is) a conspiracy to hide its own shortcomings. No doubt the same may be said of all professions. They are all conspiracies against the laity... (U)ntil there is a practicable alternative to blind trust in the doctor, the truth about the doctor is so terrible that we dare not face it.
I find it easy to forgive the man who invented a devilish instrument like dynamite, but how can one ever forgive the diabolical mind that invented the Nobel Prize in Literature?
With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his. . . . It would positively be a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him.