ter to poverty and disease are accomplices in the two
worst of all the crimes.

He who gives money he has not earned is generous with other people's
labor.

Every genuinely benevolent person loathes almsgiving and mendicity.

FAME

Life levels all men: death reveals the eminent.

DISCIPLINE

Mutiny Acts are needed only by officers who command without authority.
Divine right needs no whip.

WOMEN IN THE HOME

Home is the girl's prison and the woman's workhouse.

CIVILIZATION

Civilization is a disease produced by the practice of building societies
with rotten material.

Those who admire modern civilization usually identify it with the steam
engine and the electric telegraph.

Those who understand the steam engine and the electric telegraph spend
their lives in trying to replace them with something better.

The imagination cannot conceive a viler criminal than he who should
build another London like the present one, nor a greater benefactor than
he who should destroy it.

GAMBLING

The most popular method of distributing wealth is the method of the
roulette table.

The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a
passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette
tables is unknown.

Gambling promises the poor what Property performs for the rich: that is
why the bishops dare not denounce it fundamentally.

THE SOCIAL QUESTION

Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the
poor is Poverty: what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.

STRAY SAYINGS

We are told that when Jehovah created the world he saw that it was good.
What would he say now?

The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of
Christianity to savagery.

No man dares say so much of what he thinks as to appear to himself an
extremist.

Mens sana in corpore sano is a foolish saying. The sound body is a
product of the sound mind.

Decadence can find agents only when it wears the mask of progress.

In moments of progress the noble succeed, because things are going their
way: in moments of decadence the base succeed for the same reason: hence
the world is never without the exhilaration of contemporary success.

The reformer for whom the world is not good enough finds himself
shoulder to shoulder with him that is not good enough for the world.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

Youth, which is forgiven ever