When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.

The essence of a sound style is that it cannot be reduced to rules-that it is a living and breathing thing with something of the devilish in it-that it fits its proprietor tightly yet ever so loosely, as his skin fits him. It is, in fact, quite as seriously an integral part of him as that skin is. . . . In brief, a style is always the outward and visible symbol of a man, and cannot be anything else.

Of learned men, the clergy show the lowest development of professional ethics. Any pastor is free to cadge customers from the divines of rival sects, and to denounce the divines themselves as theological quacks.

Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.

The Catholic clergy seldom bother to make their arguments plausible; it is plain that they have little respect for human intelligence, and indeed little belief in its existence.

There is no idea so stupid that you can't find a professor who will believe it.

Fame: an embalmer trembling with stage fright.