“There are persons who, when they cease to shock us, cease to interest us.”

The man whose nature is such that by one path alone his chief desire will reach consummation will try to find it on that path, whatever it may be, and whatever the world thinks of it; and if he does not, he is contemptible.

Reason teaches us that what is good is good for something, and that what is good for nothing is not good at all.

Another occupation might have been better.

I will begin with the self-styled “Christian” party, who profess to base their morality on the New Testament. But whether it is really more Christian to follow or to ignore the teachings of the Gospels I shall not discuss.

The one self- knowledge worth having is to know one’s own mind.

Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived. It is a pity that this is still the only knowledge of their wives at which some men seem to arrive.

The force of the blow depends on the resistance. It is sometimes better not to struggle against temptation. Either fly or yield at once.

An aphorism is true where it has fixed the impression of a genuine experience.

The hunter for aphorisms on human nature has to fish in muddy water, and he is even condemned to find much of his own mind.

Religion is rather the attempt to express the complete reality of goodness through every aspect of our being.

My external sensations are no less private to my self than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside… the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.

Up to a certain point every man is what he thinks he is.

True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would be willing to repeat.

The Self has turned out to mean so many things, to mean them so ambiguously, and to be so wavering in its application, that we do not feel encouraged.

Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart’s blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.

The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil.

The same thing I did in 2013 is what I’m trying to do in 2014, which is continue to improve, continue to shock people.

Most people were shocked by the thought; it was intensely repugnant to their feelings.

When Darwin published his conclusion that man was descended from an apelike ancestor who was again descended from a still lower type.

If we heard that somebody starved to death in Sweden or Switzerland, we would be shocked.

Was sort of intellectually shocked. Contagion is the critical phenomenon which causes the thing to fall apart.

Did you stand there in shock at the sight of that black smoke risin’ against that blue sky?

Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity are in a state of shocked disbelief.

The increased flexibility of our economy, which has fostered our extraordinary resilience to shocks.