I have learned to use the word impossible with the greatest caution.

In the first place, any group of folks willing to make asses of themselves in pursuit of a good time should be commended and encouraged: The spirit of human frolic needs all the help it can get.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.

You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor.  Why should it?  The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than any one else in there being some decent government.  The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes been objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.  Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the barons' wars.

If only it were all so simple, if only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.  But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and who is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?

One of the most difficult tasks people can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games.

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.