A good joke is the closest thing we have to divine revelation.

The Universe is the most extraordinary masterpiece ever constructed by nobody.

You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.

The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more.

We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all.

What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism.

A great city is the place to escape the true drama of provincial life, and find solace in fantasy.