I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.

At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. . . .

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

If our caricaturists do not hate their enemies, it is not because they are too big to hate them, but because their enemies are not big enough to hate.

A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive.