Opera is when a tenor and soprano want to make love, but are prevented from doing so by a baritone.

In the arts of life main invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine. ... There is nothing in Man's industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons.

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.

As long as you don't fly openly in the face of society, society doesn't ask any inconvenient questions; and it makes precious short work of the cads who do. There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.

The technical history of modern harmony is a history of growth of toleration by the human ear of chords that at first sounded discordant and senseless to the main body of contemporary professional musicians.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.