Best quotes from The Way of All Flesh

t is far safer to know too little than too much. People will condemn the one, though they will resent being called upon to exert themselves to follow the other.

This is why the clergyman is so often called a vicar—he being the person whose vicarious goodness is to stand for that of those entrusted to his charge.

Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime.

We must judge men not so much by what they, as by what they make us feel that they have it in them to do. If a man has done enough in either painting, music, or the affairs of life, to make me feel that I might trust him in an emergency he has done enough.

There are two classes of people in this world, those who sin, and those who are sinned against; if a man must belong to either, he had better belong to the first than to the second.

The principal business of life is to enjoy it.

To me it seems that youth is like spring, an overpraised season-- delightful if it happen to be a favoured one, but in practice very rarely favoured and more remarkable, as a general rule, for biting east winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.

A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage--but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.

If people who are in a difficulty will only do the first little reasonable thing which they can clearly recognize as reasonable, they will always find the next step more easy both to see and take.