Bargaining is essential to the life of the world; but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.

A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candor.

People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.

America has invested her religion as well as her morality in sound income-paying securities. She has adopted the unassailable position of a nation blessed because it deserves to be blessed; and her sons, whatever other theologies they may affect or disregard, subscribe unreservedly to this national creed.

Life is so full of miseries, minor and major; they press so close upon us at every step of the way, that it is hardly worthwhile to call one another's attention to their presence.

Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.

A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example.