A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.

Suddenly to realise that one is sitting, damned, among the other damned--it is a most disquieting experience; so disquieting thatmost of us react to it by immediately plunging more deeply into our particular damnation in the hope, generally realized, that we may be able, at least for a time, to stifle our revolutionary knowledge.

There is no bad day that can’t be overcome by listening to a barbershop quartet. This is just truth, plain and simple.

Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work.

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.

For at least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols

All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.