-
I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.
-
Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich-something for nothing.
-
I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.
-
Taking all the round of professions and occupations, you will find that every man is the worse for being poor; and the doctor is a specially dangerous man when poor.
-
No severity of punishment deters when detection is uncertain, as it always must be.
-
First really like is just a little bit foolishness as well as a lot of curiosity. No actually self-respecting girl would reap the benefits of it.
-
I like a bit of a mongrel myself, whether it's a man or a dog; they're the best for every day.
-
A true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.
-
What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.
-
Creation is a miracle of daily recurrence. 'A miracle a minute' would not be a bad slogan for God.
-
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
-
A pornographic novelist is one who exploits the sexual instinct as a prostitute does. A legitimate sex novel elucidates it or brings out its poetry, tragedy, or comedy.
-
Women are not angels. They are as foolish as men in many ways; but they have had to devote themselves to life whilst men have had to devote themselves to death; and that makes a vital difference in male and female religion. Women have been forced to fear whilst men have been forced to dare: the heroism of a woman is to nurse and protect life, and of a man to destroy it and court death.
-
Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict without a single amiable trait.
-
If women were particular about men's characters, they would never get married at all.
-
The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery.
-
Very few people can afford to be poor.
-
I also made it quite clear that Socialism means equality of income or nothing, and that under socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly feed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you like it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live you would have to live well.
-
Affection between adults - if they are really adult in mind and not merely grown up children - and creatures so relatively selfish and cruel as children necessarily are without knowing it or meaning it, cannot be called natural.
-
Chloroform has done a lot of mischief. It's enabled every fool to be a surgeon.
-
The only secrets are the secrets that keep themselves.
-
A married man forms married habits and becomes dependent on marriage just as a sailor becomes dependent on the sea.
-
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-
Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.