We have in England a curious belief in first-rate people, meaning all the people we do not know; and this consoles us for the undeniable second-rateness of the people we do know.
The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them.
The danger of crippling thought, the danger of obstructing the formation of the public mind by specially suppressing ... representations is far greater than any real danger that there is from such representations.
Every man to whom salvation is offered has an inalienable natural right to say 'No, thank you: I prefer to retain my full moral responsibility: it is not good for me to be able to load a scapegoat with my sins: I should be less careful how I committed them if I knew they would cost me nothing.
You can easily find people who are ten times as rich at sixty as they were at twenty but not one of them will tell you that they are ten times as happy
The world was to Shakespeare a great stage of fools on which he was utterly bewildered. His pregnant observations of life are not coordinated into any philosophy.
If you demand my authorities for this and that, I must reply that only those who have never hunted up the authorities as I have believe that there is any authority who is not contradicted flatly by some other authority.
You have no right to say that I am not sincere. I have found a happiness in art that real life has never given me. I am intensely in earnest about art. There is is a magic and mystery in art that you know nothing of.