Experience has taught me that the only cruelties people condemn are those with which they do not happen to be familiar.

Given two tempers and the time, the ordinary marriage produces anarchy.

[Reformers] might be classified as a distinct species having eyes in the back of their heads.

Only on the surface of things have I ever trod the beaten path. So long as I could keep from hurting anyone else, I have lived, as completely as it was possible, the life of my choice. I have been free. . . . I have done the work I wished to do for the sake of that work alone.

... beauty, like ecstasy, has always been hostile to the commonplace. And the commonplace, under its popular label of the normal,has been the supreme authority for Homo sapiens since the days when he was probably arboreal.

Nothing is more trying than nerves to people who have none.

To drink for pleasure may be a distraction, but to drink from misery is always a danger.