Do not permit a woman to ask forgiveness, for that is only the first step. The second is justification of herself by accusation of you.

If we knew nothing was behind us we should discern our true relation to the universe.

Youth has the sun and the stars by which to determine his position on the sea of life; Age must sail by dead reckoning and knows not whither he is bound.

Happiness is lost by criticising it; sorrow by accepting it.

As Nature can not make us altogether wretched she resorts to the trick of contrast by making us sometimes almost happy.

When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had.

When God saw how faulty was man He tried again and made woman. As to why He then stopped there are two opinions. One of them is woman's.

She hated him because he discovered that her lark was a crow. He hated her because she unlocked the cage of his beast.

"Who art thou?"

"Friendship."

"I am Love; let us travel together."

"Yes—for a day's journey; then thou arrivest at thy grave."

"And thou?"

"I go as far as the grave of Advantage."

Look far enough ahead and always thou shalt see the domes and spires of the City of Contentment.

You would say of that old man: "He is bald and bent." No; in the presence of Death he uncovers and bows.

If you saw Love pictured as clad in furs you would smile. Yet every year has its winter.

You can not disprove the Great Pyramid by showing the impossibility of putting the stones in place.

Men were singing the praises of Justice.

"Not so loud," said an angel; "if you wake her she will put you all to death."

Age, with his eyes in the back of his head, thinks it wisdom to see the bogs through which he has floundered.

Wisdom is known only by contrasting it with folly; by shadow only we perceive that all visible objects are not flat. Yet Philanthropos would abolish evil!

One whose falsehoods no longer deceive has forfeited the right to speak truth.

Wisdom is a special knowledge in excess of all that is known.

To live is to believe. The most credulous of mortals is he who is persuaded of his incredulity.

In him who has never wronged another, revenge is a virtue.

That you can not serve God and Mammon is a poor excuse for not serving God.

A fool's tongue is not so noisy but the wise can hear his ear commanding them to silence.

If the Valley of Peace could be reached only by the path of love, it would be sparsely inhabited.

To the eye of failure success is an accident with a presumption of crime.

Wearing his eyes in his heart, the optimist falls over his own feet, and calls it Progress.

You can calculate your distance from Hell by the number of wayside roses. They are thickest at the hither end of the route.

The world was made a sphere in order that men should not push one another off, but the landowner smiles when he thinks of the sea.

Having given out all the virtues that He had made, God made another.

"Give us that also," said His children.

"Nay," He replied, "if I give you that you will slay one another till none is left. You shall have only its name, which is Justice."

"That is a good name," they said; "we will give it to a virtue of our own creation."

So they gave it to Revenge.

While you have a future do not live too much in contemplation of your past: unless you are content to walk backward the mirror is a poor guide.

"O dreadful Death, why veilest thou thy face?"

"To spare me thine impetuous embrace."

He who knows himself great accepts the truth in reverent silence, but he who only believes himself great has embraced a noisy faith.

Life is a little plot of light. We enter, clasp a hand or two, and go our several ways back into the darkness. The mystery is infinitely pathetic and picturesque.

Cheerfulness is the religion of the little. The low hills are a-smirk with flowers and greenery; the dominating peaks, austere and desolate, holding a prophecy of doom.

It is not to our credit that women like best the men who are not as other men, nor to theirs that they are not particular as to the nature of the difference.

In the journey of life when thy shadow falls to the westward stop until it falls to the eastward. Thou art then at thy destination.

Brain was given to test the heart's credibility as a witness, yet the philosopher's lady is almost as fine as the clown's wench.

"Who art thou, so sorrowful?"

"Ingratitude. It saddens me to look upon the devastations of Benevolence."

"Then veil thine eyes, for I am Benevolence."

"Wretch! thou art my father and my mother."

Death is the only prosperity that we neither desire for ourselves nor resent in others.

To the small part of ignorance that we can arrange and classify we give the name Knowledge.

"I wish to enter," said the soul of the voluptuary.

"I am told that all the beautiful women are here."

"Enter," said Satan, and the soul of the voluptuary passed in.

"They make the place what it is," added Satan, as the gates clanged.

Woman would be more charming if one could fall into her arms without falling into her hands.

Think not to atone for wealth by apology: you must make restitution to the accuser.

Before undergoing a surgical operation arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.

Intolerance is natural and logical, for in every dissenting opinion lies an assumption of superior wisdom.

"Who art thou?" said Saint Peter at the Gate.

"I am known as Memory."

"What presumption!—go back to Hell. And who, perspiring friend, art thou?"

"My name is Satan. I am looking for——"

"Take your penal apparatus and be off."

And Satan, laying hold of Memory, said: "Come along, you scoundrel! you make happiness wherever you are not."

Women of genius commonly have masculine faces, figures and manners. In transplanting brains to an alien soil God leaves a little of the original earth clinging to the roots.

The heels of Detection are sore from the toes of Remorse.

Twice we see Paradise. In youth we name it Life; in age, Youth.

Fear of the darkness is more than an inherited superstition—it is at night, mostly, that the king thinks.

"Who art thou?" said Mercy.

"Revenge, the father of Justice."

"Thou wearest thy son's clothing."

"One must be clad."

"Farewell—I go to attend thy son."

"Thou wilt find him hiding in yonder jungle."

Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.

Men talk of selecting a wife; horses, of selecting an owner.

You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute. You are avenged fourteen hundred and forty times a day.

A sweetheart is a bottle of wine; a wife is a wine-bottle.

He gets on best with women who best knows how to get on without them.

"Who am I?" asked an awakened soul.

"That is the only knowledge that is denied to you here," answered a smiling angel; "this is Heaven."

Woman's courage is ignorance of danger; man's is hope of escape.

If you wish to slay your enemy make haste, O make haste, for already Nature's knife is at his throat and yours.

To most persons a sense of obligation is insupportable; beware upon whom you inflict it.

Life and Death threw dice for a child.

"I win!" cried Life.

"True," said Death, "but you need a nimbler tongue to proclaim your luck. The stake is already dead of age."

In childhood we expect, in youth demand, in manhood hope, and in age beseech.

If women knew themselves the fact that men do not know them would flatter them less and content them more.

The angel with a flaming sword slept at his post, and Eve slipped back into the Garden. "Thank Heaven! I am again in Paradise," said Adam.