For over two thousand years it has been the custom among earnest moralists to decry happiness as something degraded and unworthy

The institution of representative government to us seems an essential part of democracy, but the ancients never thought of it. Its immense merit was that it enabled a large constituency to exert indirect power, and thus made possible the distribution of political responsibility throughout the great states of modern times.

As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our trouble. . . . No Catholic, for instance, takes seriously the text which says that a Bishop should be the husband of one wife.

A smile happens in a flash, but its memory can last a lifetime.

The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.

The true spirit of delight...is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.