I believe that the highest virtue is to be happy, living in the greatest truth, not submitting to the falsehood of these personaltimes.

Religion was fading into the background. He had shovelled away all the beliefs that would hamper him, had cleared the ground, and come more or less to the bedrock of belief that one should feel inside oneself for right or wrong, and should have the patience to gradually realise one's God. Now life interested him more.

The Moon! Artemis! the great goddess of the splendid past of men! Are you going to tell me she is a dead lump?

The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.

Since obscenity is the truth of our passion today, it is the only stuff of art -- or almost the only stuff.

If you cut a thing up, of course it will smell. Hence, nothing raises such an infernal stink at last, as human psychology.

Why, why are people all balls of bitter dust? Because they won't fall off the tree when they're ripe. They hang on to their old positions when the position is overpast, till they become infested with little worms and dry-rot.