When "everyone knows" that something is so, it is always more interesting and often illuminating to assumeexactly the opposite, and to see where that leads.

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

To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man.

The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

Men spoke much in my boyhood about restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it's a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been.

Just the other day in the Underground I enjoyed the pleasure of offering my seat to three ladies.

Every man is important if he loses his life;and every man is funny if he loses his hat and has to run after it.