A woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness, his need of an amiable environment, his touching self-delusion.

Well, I tell you, if I have been wrong in my agnosticism, when I die I'll walk up to God in a manly way and say, Sir, I made an honest mistake.

The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.

The motive of fear is the be-all and end-all of religion.

There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.

New York: A third-rate Babylon.