Witty quotes & one-liners

It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

BORE, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolute nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,I will be brief.

I declare, after all, there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.

My good opinion once lost is lost for ever.

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?

I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.

I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.

Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket"—which is but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention;" but the wise man saith, "Put all your eggs in the one basket and—watch that basket"

This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.

This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse-races.

I can resist everything except temptation.

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

You don’t seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

Housekeeping ain’t no joke.

The world has held great Heroes,As history-books have showed;But never a name to go down to fameCompared with that of Toad!

Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.

Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

The time has come,’ the Walrus said,‘To talk of many things:Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—Of cabbages—and kings—And why the sea is boiling hot—And whether pigs have wings.

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!

The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday—but never jam to-day.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

Do I contradict myself?Very well then I contradict myself,(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Success is counted sweetestBy those who ne'er succeed.

The bird wishes it were a cloud. The cloud wishes it were a bird.

You see, but you do not observe.

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

“My dear fellow,” said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, “life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence.”

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.

I can’t sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

For marriage is like life in this—that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.

BIRTH, n. The first and direst of all disasters.

BRIDE, n. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

PATIENCE, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

ACQUAINTANCE, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

LABOR, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.

CONGRATULATION, n. The civility of envy.

FUTURE, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

OCEAN, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man—who has no gills.

ADMIRATION, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

AGE, n. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we still cherish by reviling those that we have no longer the enterprise to commit.

QUOTATION, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.

EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.

PRESENT, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.

DIPLOMACY, n. The patriotic art of lying for one's country.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

Mothers are the best lovers in the world, but I don’t mind whispering to Marmee that I’d like to try all kinds.

Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one. If you are asked what o'clock it is, tell it; but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like the watchman.

An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.

Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes, you might fail of the knowing me: it is a wise father that knows his own child.

“I mean, what is an un-birthday present?” “A present given when it isn’t your birthday, of course.”