Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.

Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air. . . . It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog's life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.

I have never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from other men. There is not much harm in a lion. He has no ideals, no religion, no politics, no chivalry, no gentility; in short, no reason for destroying anything that he does not want to eat

The popular definition of tragedy is heavy drama in which everyone is killed in the last act, comedy being light drama in which everyone is married in the last act.

The wheels are turning, but the hamsters are all dead. Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot. I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty; and besides, the pig likes it.

Woman reduces us all to the common denominator.

Once the divinity we worshipped made itself visible and comprehensible, we crucified it.