Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity.

Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the congenitally sinful, who know when to play with it and when to let it alone.

If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula.

The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud.

The Jews fastened their religion upon the Western world, not because it was more reasonable than the religions of their contemporaries - as a matter of fact, it was vastly less reasonable than many of them - but because it was far more poetical.

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