"I fear that if I say what I think it may appear extravagant; while if I moderate my words I shall feel that I am doing scant justice to what has seemed to me the most remarkable human document that has appeared in my time. It is a masterpiece of realism. The work of a craftsman, it is true, unerring and pitiless in its delineation of men and life. Were Zola and Tolstoi living, I am sure they would look upon this common house-painter with envy, as one whose novice hand had outdone them. I am sure that Gorky and Jack London would confess frankly that the work of Robert Tressall surpasses theirs. Certainly, London's The Call of the Wild cannot be as true to life as these ragged philanthropists."

"The book [The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists] is a realistic description of the building trade in the early years of this century and a powerful exposition of socialist ideas, written by a working-man, Bob Noonan, under the pen-name of Robert Tressell. In my youth it was passed from hand to hand among people in the Labour movement and had a remarkable effect on our thinking."

"Just as the place of Chartist literature within the cultural heritage was never defined, the reasons for the great success of Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists were never laid bare. This is even more surprising in view of the fact that this novel, which was reprinted twice in the Thirties, had, in its adaptation for the stage, already been a major success of the Workers' Theatre Movement, was read by workers and sold during the first forty years of its 'censored' publication more than 100,000 copies – an almost unbelievable figure, if one considers that the average edition of a working-class novel in the Thirties was 1,500 copies, of which less than two-thirds were sold."

"Without sensationalism and almost without plot it sets to record the actual detail of manual work and the tiny things almost unimaginable to any comfortably situated person which make life a misery when one's income drops below a certain level... It is a book that everyone should read. Quite apart from its value as a piece of social history it leaves one with the feeling that a considerable novelist was lost in this young working-man whom society could not bother to keep alive."

"It was at the turn of the century that Robert Tressall, a house-painter, wrote the story of working-class life which he called The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Since that time much paint has been spilled and grumbled over. But Tressall's evocation of the talk of a gang of Cockney workers is as intimate, as amusing—and as touching—as it was then. Nor has there been anything else quite like it, though perhaps Mr. Maugham came nearest in some passages of Liza of Lambeth."

"For your Tories his fine Irish brain he would spin, Who received prose and rhyme with a promising grin, "Go ahead, you queer fish, and more power to your fin!" But to save from starvation stirred never a pin... But at last he was beat, and sought help of the bin, (All the same to the Doctor, from claret to gin), Which led swiftly to gaol, with consumption therein; It was much, when the bones rattled loose in his skin. He got leave to die here, out of Babylon’s din. Barring drinks and the girls, I ne’er heard of a sin, Many worse, better few, than bright broken Maginn."

"It is singular that scarcely any tailor who can make a coat well, can make pantaloons."

"The wight can tell A melancholy and a merry tale Of field, and fight, and chief, and lady gay."

"Cold pig's face is one of the best things in the world for breakfast."

"In general, in-door prospects are the best. What purling brook matches the music of my gurgling bottle? What is an old roofless cathedral compared to a well-built pie?"

"Claret should always be decanted."

"Never wear a coat with a velvet collar."

"If prudes were as pure as they would have us believe, they would not rail so bitterly as they do. We do not thoroughly hate that which we do not thoroughly understand."

"No cigar-smoker ever committed suicide."

"People may talk as they like, but after all, London is London."

"In literature and in love we generally begin in bad taste."

"When a man is drunk, it is no matter upon what he has got drunk."

"There is no such thing as female genius."

"Much is to be said in favour of toasted cheese for supper."

"He whose friendship is worth having, must hate and be hated."

"Maxims are hard reading, demanding a constant stretch of the intellectual faculties. Every word must be diligently pondered, every assertion examined in all its bearings, pursued with a keen eye to its remotest consequences, rejected with a philosophic calmness, or treasured up with the same feeling as a "κτημα ες αει" — a "possession to eternity.""

"Hock cannot be too much, claret cannot be too little, iced."

"Never take lobster-sauce to salmon; it is mere painting of the lily, or, I should rather say, of the rose."

"Whenever you see a book frequently advertised, you may be pretty sure it is a bad one. If you see a puff quoted in the advertisement, you may be quite sure."

"Ass-milk, they say, tastes exceedingly like woman's. No wonder."

"The safety of women consists in one circumstance: Men do not possess at the same time the knowledge of thirty-five and the blood of seventeen."

"The finest of all times for flirting is a wedding. They are all agog, poor things!"

"Marrying girls is a nice matter always; for they are as cautious as crows plundering a corn-field. ... I don't myself, I profess, upon principle, see any objection to marrying a widow. ... If a woman, however, has had more than three husbands, she poisons them: avoid her."

"You've heard, I suppose, long ago, How the snakes, in a manner most antic, He march'd to the County Mayo, And trundled them into th' Atlantic. Hence not to use water for drink The people of Ireland determine; With mighty good reason, I think, Since St Patrick has fill'd it with vermin, And vipers, and other such stuff."

"In order to know what cod really is, you must eat it in Newfoundland."

"The best of all pies is a grouse-pie."

"Tap claret tastes best out of a pewter pot."

"Some people tell you you should not drink claret after strawberries. They are wrong, if the claret be good. The milky taste of good claret coheses admirably with strawberries — somewhat like cream."

"A band of gallant souls, who knew The olive wood, the mountain blue, The ration rum, the biscuit black, The long bleak road, the bivouac, The cannon's thunder, and the bays That wave o'er glorious victories, Better than city's midnight dress, Her luxuries, and gaudiness."

"No tom cat ever paid more determined attention to mouse-catching pastime, than did the General to his favourite pleasure of pouncing upon the invalid officer, who but dared to show himself out of his melancholy quarters. He conceived that no man could possibly be sick, who was able to move his legs; and if a half dead officer could but smoke a cigar, or twist the corners of his mouth into a smile, the whole medical staff could not have persuaded the General out of his opinion, that such a person was not only in excellent health, but fit to brave the rudest weather, and the severest duties of the field."

"Every popular preacher is a goose."

"Poetry is like claret, one enjoys it only when it is very new, or when it is very old."

"We moderns are perhaps inferior to our ancestors in nothing more than in our epitaphs."

"Race and temperament go for so much in influencing opinion!"

"Vulgarity is setting store by "the things which are seen.""

"Your letters are always to me fresher than flowers, without their fading so soon."

"It is quite deplorable to see how many rational creatures (or, at least, who are thought so) mistake suffering for sanctity, and think a sad face and a gloomy habit of mind, propitious offerings to that deity, whose works are all light, and lustre, and harmony, and loveliness."

"Architecture is the printing-press of all ages, and gives a history of the state of the society in which it was erected; from the cromlech of the Druids to those toyshops of royal bad taste."

"The playful kitten, with its pretty little tigerish gambles, is infinitely more amusing than half the people one is obliged to live with in the world."

"The influence of woman was, is, and ever will be exercised, directly or indirectly, in good or in evil! It is a part of the scheme of nature. Give her then the lights she is capable of receiving; educate her (whatever her station) for taking her part in society. Her ignorance has often made her interference fatal: her knowledge, never."

"You see, my good friend, how much we are the creatures of situation and circumstance, and with what pliant servility the mind resigns itself to the impressions of the senses, or the illusions of the imagination."

"Beauty depends more upon the movement of the face than upon the form of the features when at rest. Thus a countenance habitually under the influence of amiable feelings acquires a beauty of the highest order, from the frequency with which such feelings are the originating causes of the movement or expressions which stamp their character upon it."

"Alas! how truly did he tell her, that the love of ornament creeps slowly, but surely, into the female heart;—that the girl who twines the lily in her tresses, and looks at herself in the clear stream, will soon wish that the lily was fadeless, and the stream a mirror."

"Not she with trait'rous kiss her Saviour stung, Not she denied him with unholy tongue; She, while apostles shrank, could danger brave, Last at his cross, and earliest at his grave."