No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.

No man ever quite believes in any other man.

A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.

Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

When you sympathize with a married woman you either make two enemies or gain one wife and one friend.

The martini: the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.

[Government] is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation, mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members.