In the modern technoindustrial culture, it is possible to proceed from infancy into senility without ever knowing manhood.

How did Haydn and Mozart produce such vast quantities of formally perfect art? They worked from a perfect formula. In music, Beethoven was the Great Emancipator.

The true, unacknowledged purpose of capital punishment is to inspire fear and awe -- fear and awe of the State.

A leader leads from in front, by the power of example. A ruler pushes from behind, by means of the club, the whip, the power of fear.

No man likes to be smoked out of his hole in February.

Henry James was our master of periphrasis -- the fine art of saying as little as possible in the greatest number of words.

Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.