Women and foxes, being weak, are distinguished by superior tact.

To fatten pigs, confine and feed them; to fatten rogues, cultivate a generous disposition.

Every heart is the lair of a ferocious animal.  The greatest wrong that you can put upon a man is to provoke him to let out his beast.

When two irreconcilable propositions are presented for assent the safest way is to thank Heaven that we are not as the unreasoning brutes, and believe both.

Truth is more deceptive than falsehood, for it is more frequently presented by those from whom we do not expect it, and so has against it a numerical presumption.

A bad marriage is like an electrical thrilling machine:  it makes you dance, but you can’t let go.

Meeting Merit on a street-crossing, Success stood still.  Merit stepped off into the mud and went round him, bowing his apologies, which Success had the grace to accept.

  “I think,” says the philosopher divine,
  “Therefore I am.”  Sir, here’s a surer sign: 
  We know we live, for with our every breath
  We feel the fear and imminence of death.

The first man you meet is a fool.  If you do not think so ask him and he will prove it.

He who would rather inflict injustice than suffer it will always have his choice, for no injustice can be done to him.

There are as many conceptions of a perfect happiness hereafter as there are minds that have marred their happiness here.

We yearn to be, not what we are, but what we are not.  If we were immortal we should not crave immortality.

A rabbit’s foot may bring good luck to you, but it brought none to the rabbit.

Before praising the wisdom of the man who knows how to hold his tongue, ascertain if he knows how to hold his pen.

The most charming view in the world is obtained by introspection.

Love is unlike chess, in that the pieces are moved secretly and the player sees most of the game.  But the looker-on has one incomparable advantage:  he is not the stake.

It is not for nothing that tigers choose to hide in the jungle, for commerce and trade are carried on, mostly, in the open.

We say that we love, not whom we will, but whom we must.  Our judgment need not, therefore, go to confession.

Of two kinds of temporary insanity, one ends in suicide, the other in marriage.

If you give alms from compassion, why require the beneficiary to be “a deserving object”?  No other adversity is so sharp as destitution of merit.

Bereavement is the name that selfishness gives to a particular privation.

  O proud philanthropist, your hope is vain
  To get by giving what you lost by gain. 
  With every gift you do but swell the cloud
  Of witnesses against you, swift and loud—­
  Accomplices who turn and swear you split
  Your life:  half robber and half hypocrite. 
  You’re least unsafe when most intact you hold
  Your curst allotment of dishonest gold.