The martyr endured tortures to affirm his belief in truth but he never asserted his disbelief in torture.

Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other good things in a society no longer work that the society begins to decline; when its food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless.

Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men.

In a world where everything is ridiculous, nothing can be ridiculed. You cannot unmask a mask.

The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.