Nine times out of ten it is the coarse word that condemns an evil, and the refined word that excuses it.

The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.

A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.

There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.

If I think the universe is triangular, and you think it is square, there cannot be room for two universes. We may argue politely, we may argue humanely, we may argue with great mutual benefit: but, obviously, we must argue.

A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy.

If a man called Christmas Day a mere hypocritical excuse for drunkenness and gluttony, that would be false, but it would have a fact hidden in it somewhere. But when Bernard Shaw says the Christmas Day is only a conspiracy kept up by poulterers and wine merchants from strictly business motives, then he says something which is not so much false as startling and arrestingly foolish. He might as well say that the two sexes were invented by jewellers who wanted to sell wedding rings.