Life may not be exactly pleasant, but it is at least not dull. Heave yourself into Hell today, and you may miss, tomorrow or next day, another Scopes trial, or another War to End War, or perchance a rich and buxom widow with all her first husband's clothes. There are always more Hardings hatching. I advocate hanging on as long as possible.

One yearns unspeakably for a composer who gives out his pair of honest themes, and then develops them unashamed, and then hangs a brisk coda to them, and then shuts up.

Everyman is thoroughly happy twice in his life, just after he has met his first love, and just after he has left his last one.

On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.

The genuine music lover may accept the carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of actual music within, but that is no sign that he approves the carnal husk or enjoys gnawing through it.

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

[Government's] great contribution to human wisdom...is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.