“There are many ways of asking a favor; but to assume that you are granting the favor that you ask shows spirit and invention.”

Neatness of phrase is so closely akin to wit that it is often accepted as its substitute.

Need drives men to envy as fullness drives them to selfishness.

Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.

Miserliness is the one vice that grows stronger with increasing years. It yields its sordid pleasures to the end.

We owe to one another all the wit and good humour we can command; and nothing so clears our mental vistas as sympathetic and intelligent conversation.

We are tethered to our kind, and may as well join hands in the struggle.

But self-satisfaction, if as buoyant as gas, has an ugly trick of collapsing when full blown, and facts are stony things that refuse to melt away in the sunshine of a smile.

We know when we have had enough of a friend, and we know when a friend has had enough of us. The first truth is no more palatable than the second.

Personally, I do not believe that it is the duty of any man or woman to write a novel. In nine cases out of ten, there would be greater merit in leaving it unwritten.

it is not every tourist who bubbles over with mirth, and that unquenchable spirit of humor which turns a trial into a blessing.

Sleep sweetly in the fields of asphodel, and waken, as of old, to stretch thy languid length, and purr thy soft contentment to the skies.

There is nothing in the world so enjoyable as a thorough-going monomania.

To be brave in misfortune is to be worthy of manhood; to be wise in misfortune is to conquer fate.

There is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join

People fed on sugared praises cannot be expected to feel an appetite for the black broth of honest criticism.

Wit is a pleasure-giving thing, largely because it eludes reason; but in the apprehension of an absurdity through the working of the comic spirit there is a foundation of reason, and an impetus to human companionship.

That which once united man Now drives him apart.

You always know when you’re going to arrive. If you go by car, you don’t. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.

When life falls apart always remember that this too will pass. Life will have its unexpected turns.

It’s not easy in this phosphorescent gloom telling waking dreams apart anyhow.

Earlier, I used to charge territories instead of my fees as an actor, but I realised it was better to keep the two apart.

You know the most important thing the Americans did for Iraq apart from liberating the country from Saddam was helping Iraq reduce its debt.

There is only consciousness. There is no individual apart from consciousness who is conscious.

Self-sufficiency, independence, the capacity to stand apart, to differ, to resist, and to defy-all are modes of being human.