Great artists are modest almost as seldom as they are faithful to their wives.

People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?

The truth is . . . that the great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom ever ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man - that is, virtuous in the YMCA sense - has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman.

All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers.

There are two kinds of music; German music and bad music.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly. He is like a watch of which the most that can be said is that its cosmetic effect is good.

The scent of frying astronomers long ago ceased to ascend to Yahweh.