A gentleman is never rude except on purpose - I can honestly be nasty sober, believe you me.

Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.

it is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists

A sort of moral blackmail is exerted from both poles. The underclass, one gathers, should be dulled with charity and welfare provision lest it turn nasty. The upper class must likewise be conciliated by vast handouts, lest it lose the "incentive" to go on generating wealth.

Exercise is a pastime only for those who are already slender and physically fit. It just isn't so much fun when you have a marked tendency to wheeze and throw up, and a cannonball of a belly sloshing around inside the baggy garments.

One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That's how the human species has done as well as it has.

Virtue and merit can become their opposites if they are exacted or compelled.