It is a noteworthy fact that kicking and beating have played so considerable a part in the habits which necessity has imposed on mankind in past ages that the only way of preventing civilized men from beating and kicking their wives is to organize games in which they can kick and beat balls.

Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance.

If we have come to think that the nursery and the kitchen are the natural sphere of a woman, we have done so exactly as English children come to think that a cage is the natural sphere of a parrot: because they have never seen one anywhere else.

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

Optimistic lies have such immense therapeutic value that a doctor who cannot tell them convincingly has mistaken his profession.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.