The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

Good government is that which delivers the citizen from being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently-one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gentler, more dignified, and more agreeable undertakings.

The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices. The physician does not preach repentance; he offers absolution.

Never drink if you've got any work to do. Never.

I roll out of my couch every morning with the more agreeable expectations.

Of all forms of visible otherworldliness, it seems to me, the Gothic is at once the most logical and the most beautiful. It reaches up magnificently-and a good half of it is palpably useless.

There are two impossibilities in life: "just one drink" and "an honest politician."