"Respectable means rich, and decent means poor. I should die if I heard my family called decent."

“There are two reasons for drinking: one is, when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it. The first is obvious, mechanical, and plebeian; the second is most refined, abstract, prospicient, and canonical.”

“I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race.”

“Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond.”

“When Scythrop grew up, he was sent, as usual, to a public school, where a little learning was painfully beaten into him, and from thence to the university, where it was carefully taken out of him.”

“I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away.”

“My quarrel with him is, that his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a book that furnishes no quotations, is, me judice , no book - it is a plaything.”