Destiny and history are untidy.

To love without criticism is to be betrayed.

There's something evil in me that loves evil and degradation--purity's black backside! That loves honesty with a horrid love; or why have I always gone seeking it at the liar's door?

Life is painful, nasty and short.. in my case it has only been painful and nasty.

A man's sorrow runs uphill; true it is difficult for him to bear, but it is also difficult for him to keep.

We are beginning to wonder whether a servant girl hasn't the best of it after all. She knows how the salad tastes without the dressing, and she knows how life's lived before it gets to the parlor door.

You beat the liver out of a goose to get a pâté; you pound the muscles of a man's cardia to get a philosopher.