Romance is the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure.

There is no way in which a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset.

Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.

I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion.

It is the friction of two spiritual things, of tradition and invention, or of substance and symbol, from which the mind takes fire. The creeds condemned as complex have something like the secret of sex; they can breed thoughts.

'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'

Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or in German.