“It is not likely that posterity will fall in love with us, but not impossible that it may respect or sympathize; so a man would rather leave behind him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his face.”

Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer.

The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy.

Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate.

No man is useless while he has a friend.

Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he is of the nineteenth century, and that glaringly.

We live in an ascending scale when we live happily, one thing leading to another in an endless series.

I am in the habit of looking not so much to the nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered.

Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.

There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.

The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

We all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it.

Once you are married, there is nothing left for you, not even suicide.

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.

You can forgive people who do not follow you through a philosophical disquisition.

When a torrent sweeps a man against a boulder, you must expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the scream is sometimes a theory.

For me, heaven is likely to be a bit of a come-down.

The weak are more likely to make the strong weak than the strong are likely to make the weak strong.

This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.

You have to have a catcher because if you don’t you’re likely to have a lot of passed balls.

The variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds, or is likely to exceed, that in all of the rest of life combined.

The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it.

I would go swaggering into restaurants in some ridiculous tramp disguise, challenging them to mistreat me, order the things I was least likely to enjoy, then hurl my plate aside in a fury and demand to see the manager.

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.