Society and the World

Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it; it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.

Gossip is the art-form of the man and woman in the street, and the proper subject for gossip, as for all art, is the behavior of mankind.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

Generosity lies less in giving much than in giving at the right moment.

What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given.

Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.

That’s what I consider true generosity. You give your all and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.

The path of social advancement is, and must be, strewn with broken friendships.

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

There’s no system foolproof enough to defeat a sufficiently great fool.

A learned fool is a greater fool than an ignorant fool.

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true.

To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.

Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt, and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

One defeats the fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one’s intelligence.

Fanatics fear liberty more than they fear persecution.

The family is the association established by nature for the supply of man’s everyday wants.

There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.

A man’s life is interesting primarily when he has failed—I well know. For it’s a sign that he tried to surpass himself.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.