GEORGE MEREDITH

Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.

A human act once set in motion flows on forever to the great account. Our deathlessness is in what we do, not in what we are.

The man of science is nothing if not a poet gone wrong.

There is nothing the body suffers the soul may not profit by.

Speech is the small change of silence.

Kissing don't last: cookery do!

Bring the army of the faithful through.

I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.

She poured a little social sewage into his ears.

Don't just count your years, make your years count.

Possession without obligation to the object possessed approaches felicity.

The most dire disaster in love is the death of imagination.

Jealousy is love bed of burning snarl.

A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.

Always imitate the behavior of the winners when you lose.

Caricature is rough truth.

The well of true wit is truth itself.

Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul when hot for certainties in this our life!

Cynicism is intellectual dandyism.

Memoirs are the backstairs of history.

The man or the country that fights priestcraft and priests is to my mind striking deeper for freedom than can be struck anywhere.

We are sons of yesterday, not of the morning. The past is our mortal mother, no dead thing. Our future constantly reflects her to the soul.

Nations at war are wild beasts.

The world prefers decorum to honesty.