Women hate revolutions and revolutionists. They like men who are docile, and well-regarded at the bank, and never late at meals.

No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a citizen and a Christian, his true meannesses, his true imbecilities, to his friends, or even to his wife. Honest autobiography is therefore a contradiction in terms: the moment a man considers himself, even in petto, he tries to gild and fresco himself. Thus a man's wife, however realistic her view of him, always flatters him in the end, for the worst she sees in him is appreciably better, by the time she sees it, than what is actually there.

America's biggest failure is its inability to take comedy seriously.

Why do men delight in work? Fundamentally, I suppose, because there is a sense of relief and pleasure in getting something done - a kind of satisfaction not unlike that which a hen enjoys on laying an egg.

The truth is that the scientific value of Polar exploration is greatly exaggerated. The thing that takes men on such hazardous trips is really not any thirst for knowledge, but simply a yearning for adventure. ... A Polar explorer always talks grandly of sacrificing his fingers and toes to science. It is an amiable pretention, but there is no need to take it seriously.

Immortality is the condition of a dead man who doesn't believe he is dead

Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.