There are no ordinary people.. it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.

If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?

The surest way of spoiling a pleasure [is] to start examining your satisfaction.

We delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.

We must perpetually try to distinguish, however closely they get entwined by the subtle nature of the facts and by the secret importunity of our passions, those attitudes in a writer which we can honestly and confidently condemn as real evils, and those qualities in his writing which simply annoy and offend us as men of taste.

It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.

Like a good chess player, Satan is always trying to maneuver you into a position where you can save your castle only by losing your bishop.