To desire money is much nobler than to desire success. Desiring money may mean desiring to return to your country, or marry the woman you love, or ransom your father from brigands. But desiring success must mean that you take an abstract pleasure in the unbrotherly act of distancing and disgracing other men.

The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce variety and uncompromising divergences of men…In a large community, we can choose our companions. In a small community, our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized society groups come into existence founded upon sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique.

the object of a new year is not that we should have a new year, but rather that we should have a new soul.

When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.

Jokes are generally honest. Complete solemnity is always dishonest.

There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners.

humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle