Society and the World

A gentleman of our days is one who has money enough to do what every fool would do if he could afford it: that is, consume without producing.

The fatal reservation of the gentleman is that he sacrifices everything to his honor except his gentility.

In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.

In his efforts to escape from ugliness and unhappiness the rich man intensifies both. Every new yard of West End creates a new acre of East End.

In his efforts to escape from ugliness and unhappiness the rich man intensifies both. Every new yard of West End creates a new acre of East End.

The more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more careworn he becomes.

The tyranny that forbids you to make the road with pick and shovel is worse than that which prevents you from lolling along it in a carriage and pair.

The tyranny that forbids you to make the road with pick and shovel is worse than that which prevents you from lolling along it in a carriage and pair.

The tyranny that forbids you to make the road with pick and shovel is worse than that which prevents you from lolling along it in a carriage and pair.

The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

Riches and Art are spurious receipts for the production of Happiness and Beauty.

In a stupid nation the man of genius becomes a god: everybody worships him and nobody does his will.

To a mathematician the eleventh means only a single unit: to the bushman who cannot count further than his ten fingers it is an incalculable myriad.

If a great man could make us understand him, we should hang him.

Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.

Obedience simulates subordination as fear of the police simulates honesty.

Self-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.

No specific virtue or vice in a man implies the existence of any other specific virtue or vice in him, however closely the imagination may associate them.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

If you beat children for pleasure, avow your object frankly, and play the game according to the rules, as a foxhunter does; and you will do comparatively little harm. No foxhunter is such a cad as to pretend that he hunts the fox to teach it not to steal chickens, or that he suffers more acutely than the fox at the death. Remember that even in childbeating there is the sportsman's way and the cad's way.

In a slave state, the slaves rule: in Mayfair, the tradesman rules.

In a slave state, the slaves rule: in Mayfair, the tradesman rules.

Domestic servants, by making spoiled children of their masters, are forced to intimidate them in order to be able to live with them.

Domestic servants, by making spoiled children of their masters, are forced to intimidate them in order to be able to live with them.