All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

There are two great rules of life; the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end, get what he wants, if he only tries. That is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is, more or less, an exception to the rule.

The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point he should not worry himself too much about not being a thief any more. Thieving is God's message to him. Let him try and be a good thief.

The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.

Eating is touch carried to the bitter end.

For Wealth are all things that conduce, to one's destruction or their use. A standard both to buy and sell, all things from heaven down to hell.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.

For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure --tangible material prosperity in this world --is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism.

If there is any moral in Christianity, if there is anything to be learned from it, if the whole story is not profitless from first to last, it comes to this: that a man should back his own opinion against the world s.