Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.
Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.
The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.
A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.
The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.
There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.
Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.
One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.
Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
Priests are not men of the world; it is not intended that they should be; and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.
Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
It is not sufficiently considered in the hour of exultation, that all human excellence is comparative; that no man performs much but in proportion to what other accomplish, or to the time and opportunities which have been allowed him.
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it - and they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances will allow.
He that complies against his will, Is of his own opinion still.
Spare the rod and spoil the child.
They say the test of [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, "Can he name a kitten?" And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot.
Men of Science. If they are worthy of the name they are indeed about God's path and about his bed and spying out all his ways.
It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of.
This world is like Noah's Ark. In which few men but many beasts embark.
Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very seriously.
Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.
Flying. Whatever any other organism has been able to do man should surely be able to do also, though he may go a different way about it.
He is greatest who is most often in men's good thoughts.
If a man knows not life which he hath seen, how shall he know death, which he hath not seen?
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
He dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
A man should have any number of little aims about which he should be conscious and for which he should have names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness concerning the main aim of his life.
The extremes of vice and virtue are alike detestable, and absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is.
An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him; for when he is once possessed with an error, it is, like a devil, only cast out with great difficulty.
A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.
Then spare the rod and spoil the child.
Let every man be true and every god a liar.
The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness with others.
Some men love truth so much that they seem in continual fear lest she should catch cold on over-exposure.
Everyone should keep a mental wastepaper basket, and the older he grows, the more things will he promptly consign to it.
Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime.
It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity. The time present is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
Man, unlike the animals, has never learned that the sole purpose of life is to enjoy it.
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism.