The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.

Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.

The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.

New York: A third-rate Babylon.

At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgement of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.

Richard Strauss--Old Home Week in Gomorrah

Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator, and not infrequently they actually have comic touches to the victim. Happiness probably consists largely in the capacity to detect and relish them. A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.