All real democracy is an attempt like that of a jolly hostess to bring the shy people out.

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.

Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we have actually fallen to talking about having the courage to live.

When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.

Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does not fear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any common prizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless--like a tree? Fight the thing that you fear. You remember the old tale of the English clergyman who gave the last rites to the brigand of Sicily, and how on his death-bed the great robber said, 'I can give you no money, but I can give you advice for a lifetime: your thumb on the blade, and strike upwards.' So I say to you, strike upwards, if you strike at the stars.

When a woman puts up her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he is not afraid of her.

A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence.