Avoid the disputatious.  When you greet an acquaintance with “How are you?” and he replies:  “On the contrary, how are you?” pass on.

If all thought were audible none would be deemed discreditable.  We know, indeed, that bad thoughts are universal, but that is not the same thing as catching them at being so.

“All the souls in this place have been happy ever since you blundered into it,” said Satan, ejecting Hope.  “You make trouble wherever you go.”

Our severest retorts are unanswerable because nobody is present to answer them.

The angels have good dreams and bad, and we are the dreams.  When an angel wakes one of us dies.

  The man of “honor” pays his bet
  By saving on his lawful debt. 
  When he to Nature pays his dust
  (Not for he would, but for he must)
  Men say, “He settled that, ’tis true,
  But, faith, it long was overdue.”

Do not permit a woman to ask forgiveness, for that is only the first step.  The second is justification of herself by accusation of you.

If we knew nothing was behind us we should discern our true relation to the universe.

Youth has the sun and the stars by which to determine his position on the sea of life; Age must sail by dead reckoning and knows not whither he is bound.

Happiness is lost by criticising it; sorrow by accepting it.

As Nature can not make us altogether wretched she resorts to the trick of contrast by making us sometimes almost happy.

When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had.

When God saw how faulty was man He tried again and made woman.  As to why He then stopped there are two opinions.  One of them is woman’s.

She hated him because he discovered that her lark was a crow.  He hated her because she unlocked the cage of his beast.

“Who art thou?”

“Friendship.”

“I am Love; let us travel together.”

“Yes—­for a day’s journey; then thou arrivest at thy grave.”

“And thou?”

“I go as far as the grave of Advantage.”

Look far enough ahead and always thou shalt see the domes and spires of the City of Contentment.

You would say of that old man:  “He is bald and bent.”  No; in the presence of Death he uncovers and bows.

If you saw Love pictured as clad in furs you would smile.  Yet every year has its winter.

You can not disprove the Great Pyramid by showing the impossibility of putting the stones in place.

Men were singing the praises of Justice.

“Not so loud,” said an angel; “if you wake her she will put you all to death.”

Age, with his eyes in the back of his head, thinks it wisdom to see the bogs through which he has floundered.

Wisdom is known only by contrasting it with folly; by shadow only we perceive that all visible objects are not flat.  Yet Philanthropos would abolish evil!