All government is an ugly necessity.

Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.

I am a journalist and have no earthly motives except curiosity and personal vanity.

No man knows he is young while he is young.

...the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.