". . . all are still savage at heart, even you and I. For what is termed culture is but coat upon coat of paint laid on to hide our native colour, and often there is poison in the paint."

"Human nature does not change, Allan, and wine and women are ancient snares."

"In this country, England, where I write, there are bridges everywhere and no one seems to appreciate them. If they think of them at all it is to grumble about the cost of their upkeep. I wish they could have experienced what a lack of them means in a wild country during times of excessive rain, and the same remark applied to roads. You should think more of your blessings, my friends, as the old woman said to her complaining daughter who had twins two years running, adding that they might have been triplets."

"I wonder whether many people understand, as I do, how entirely distinct and how variable are these moods which sway us, or at any rate some of us, at sundry periods of our lives. As I think I have already suggested, at one time we are all spiritual; at another all physical; at one time we are sure that our lives here are as a dream and a shadow and that the real existence lies elsewhere; at another that these brief days of ours are the only business with which we have to do and that of it we must make the best. At one time we think our loves much more immortal than the stars; at another that they are mere shadows cast by the baleful sun of desire upon the shallow and fleeting water we call Life which seems to flow out of nowhere into nowhere. At one time we are full of faith, at another all such hopes are blotted out by a black wall of Nothingness, and so on ad infinitum. Only very stupid people, or humbugs, are or pretend to be, always consistent and unchanging."

"Oh! it is a strange world, full of jest to those who can see the strings that work it."

". . . your praying men . . . are cast in one mould and measured with one rule, and say what they are taught to say, not thinking for themselves . . . Some of them think . . . and then the others fall on them with big sticks. The real priest is he to whom the Spirit comes, not he who feeds upon its wrappings, and speaks through a mask carved by his father’s fathers."

"But what of names, which often enough mean nothing at all?"

"When one can think of nothing, it is best to follow the counsel of those who can think of something; also to hunt rather than to be hunted."

"It seems that in this world we never can be content . . . we only think that we should be if things were otherwise than they are."

". . . the time of kings is not their own."

"Forgive me since I acted for the best, only until the end no one ever knows what is the best."

". . . even a king may choose his own wife sometimes."

". . . gifts have a way of coming to those who do not desire them"

". . . feasts are sometimes followed by want and rejoicings by sorrow and victories by defeat, and splendid sins by repentance and slow climbing back to good again."

"It is well to be wise sometimes, for others’ sake, but not for our own, oh! not for our own."

". . . do not lie except when you are obliged, for jugglers who play with too many knives are apt to cut their fingers."

". . . too great holiness often thwarts itself and ends in trouble for the unholy flesh."

"While you are a man, live the life of a man, and when you become a spirit, live the life of a spirit. But do not seek to mix the two together like oil and wine, and thus spoil both."

". . . why do you seek to peer into the future, which from day to day will unroll itself as does a scroll? Be content with the present, man, and take what Fate gives you of good or ill, not seeking to learn what offerings he hides beneath his robe in the days and the years and the centuries to come."

"The tool carves the statue and the hand holds the tool but the spirit guides the band."

"The seconds seemed minutes, the minutes seemed hours, and the hours seemed years. . . Where now were the gods I had worshipped and—was there any god? Or was man but a self-deceiver who created gods instead of the gods creating him, because he did not love to think of an eternal blackness in which he would soon be swallowed up and lost? Well, at least that would mean sleep, and sleep is better than torment of mind or body."

". . . who ever sees Wisdom until she is flying away?"

"Never stretch out your hand to Death till he stretches out his to you"

"The truth is that we fear to die because all the religions are full of uncomfortable hints as to what may happen to us afterwards as a reward for our deviations from their laws and we half believe in something . . . For very few inhabitants of this earth can attain either to complete belief or to its absolute opposite. They can seldom lay their hands upon their hearts, and say that they know that they will live for ever, or sleep for ever; there remains in the case of most honest men an element of doubt in either hypothesis."

". . . is [it] better to be alive or dead[?] The religious plump for the latter, though I have never observed that the religious are more eager to die than the rest of us poor mortals."

"The shaft of my vengeance fell upon my own head."

"Those who go secretly, go evilly; and foul birds love to fly at night."

"Love counts not its labour nor can it weigh its tenderness in the scale of purchase. That which it has it gives, and craves for more to give and give, till the soul's infinity be drained."

"How strange a thing is a love of woman, that is so small in the beginning and in its ends so great! (...) For when the Invisible conceived the order of universe He set this seed of woman's love within its plan, that by its most unequal growth is doomed to bring about equality of law. For now it lifts the low to heights untold, and now it brings the noble to the level of the dust. And thus, while Woman, this great surprise of Nature, is, Good and Evil can never grow apart."

"For what man is there who does not prize that gift most rare and beautiful, that one perfect thing which no gold can buy – a woman's unfeigned love?"

"Women love the last blow as well as the last word, and when they fight for love they are pitiless as a wounded buffalo."

"Passion is like the lightning, it is beautiful, and it links the earth to heaven, but alas it blinds and kills!"

"How true is the saying that the very highest in rank are always the most simple and kindly. It is in your half-and-half sort of people that you find pompousness and vulgarity."

"[T]he law of England is much more severe upon offences against property than against the person, as becomes a people whose ruling passion is money."

"Civilization is only savagery silver-gilt."

"[I]n all essentials the savage and the child of civilization are identical."

"Altogether, a more miserable trio than we were that evening it would have been difficult to discover; and our only comfort lay in the reflection that we were exceedingly fortunate to be there to feel miserable, instead of being stretched dead upon the plain, as so many thousands of brave men were that night, who had risen well and strong in the morning."

"It is easier to destroy knowledge, Ignosi, than to gather it."

"I am not a nervous man in a general way, and very little troubled with superstitions, of which I have lived to see the folly."

"Then the irony of the situation forced itself upon me. There around us lay treasures enough to pay off a moderate national debt, or to build a fleet of ironclads, and yet we would have bartered them all gladly for the faintest chance of escape. Soon, doubtless, we should be rejoiced to exchange them for a bit of food or a cup of water, and, after that, even for the privilege of a speedy close to our sufferings. Truly wealth, which men spend their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last."

"And now let us love and take that which is given us, and be happy; for in the grave there is no love and no warmth, nor any touching of the lips. Nothing perchance, or perchance bitter memories of what might have been."

"Yea, all things live for ever, though at times they sleep and are forgotten."

"[T]hinking can only serve to measure out the helplessness of thought."

"Ah, how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He gathereth it like water, but like water it runneth through his fingers, and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew, behold a generation of fools call out, "See, he is a wise man!""

"There is no such thing as magic, though there is such a thing as a knowledge of the secrets of nature."

"[M]emory haunts me from age to age, and passion leads me by the hand—evil have I done, and with sorrow have I made acquaintance from age to age, and from age to age evil I shall do, and sorrow shall I know till my redemption comes."

"Time and time again have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been and passed away and been forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of several; for Time eats up the works of man."

"[T]he food that memory gives to eat is bitter to the taste, and it is only with the teeth of hope that we can bear to bite it."

"Strange are the pictures of the future that mankind can thus draw with this brush of faith and this many-coloured pigment of imagination! Strange, too, that no one of them doth agree with another!"