Aphorisms from George Meredith

"A woman who has mastered sauces sits on the apex of civilization."

"We have to guard against 'half-conceptions of wisdom, hysterical goodness, an impatient charity'- against the elementary state of the altruistic virtues. . ."

"A country of compromise goes to pieces at the first cannon shot."

"Much benevolence of the passive order may be traced to a disinclination to inflict pain upon oneself."

"We are connected with the original tendency of men to eat one another, by mounted stages, by linked ties; and at any instant to blink the fact or stop refining on the appetite is dangerous to civilization, as it is to the thrones of rulers when they forget that the world grows from molars."