When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre.

In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.

The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.

For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble and necessary to the common weal, has no assurance that it will sustain him while he stands ready to practice it, or keep him out of the poorhouse when illness or age makes him idle.

The best client is a scared millionaire.

Puccini - silver macaroni, exquisitely tangled.

[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.