“Romance is very pretty in novels, but the romance of a life is always a melancholy matter. They are most happy who have no story to tell.”

I hate a stupid man who can’t talk to me, and I hate a clever man who talks me down. I don’t like a man who is too lazy to make any effort to shine; but I particularly dislike the man who is always striving for effect.

Cham is the only thing to screw one up when one is down a peg.

Rights and rules, which are bonds of iron to a little man, are packthread to a giant.

People seen by the mind are exactly different to things seen by the eye. They grow smaller and smaller as you come nearer down to them, whereas things become bigger.

There is nothing perhaps so generally consoling to a man as a well-established grievance.

Let no man boast himself that he has got through the perils of winter till at least the seventh of May.

We cannot bring ourselves to believe it possible that a foreigner should in any respect be wiser than ourselves.

Never think that you’re not good enough yourself. A man should never think that.

Wine is valued for its price, not its flavor.

Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself.

There is such a difference between life and theory.

The double pleasure of pulling down an opponent, and of raising oneself, is the charm of a politician’s life.

Men who can succeed in deceiving no one else, will succeed at last in deceiving themselves.

This habit of reading, I make bold to tell you, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.

Men and not measures are, no doubt, the very life of politics. But then it is not the fashion to say so in public places.

Caveat emptor is the only motto going, and the worst proverb that ever came from the dishonest stony-hearted Rome.

Artists do; I don’t mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.

If happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can.

What would you be like if you were the only person in the world? If you want to be truly happy you must be that person.

It’s a strange situation, but people will pay your fare to get you to go and tell them how to be happy.

I don’t want people to think I’m not happy when we win – I am. But there’s a difference between being happy for the feeling of accomplishing something and being overjoyed and feeling, ‘This is it – we conquered the world.’ We didn’t. We just won a game.

Having a great intellect is no path to being happy.

The child who concentrates is immensely happy.

Because I’m small, I’ve been called things from ‘Happy Feet’ to ‘Little Face.’