The ideal state for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polygamy.

Some boys go to college and eventually succeed in getting out. Others go to college and never succeed in getting out. The latter are called professors.

In the long run all battles are lost, and so are all wars.

You come into the world with nothing, and the purpose of your life is to make something out of nothing.

Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a theory of the virtuous. ... The aim of medicine is surely not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard them from the consequences of their vices.

If I ever mary, it will be on a suddn impulse - as aman shoots himself

It seems to me that you are better off, as a writer and as an American, in a small town than you'd be in New York. I thoroughly detest New York, though I have to go there very often.... Have you ever noticed that no American writer of any consequence lives in Manhattan? Dreiser tried it (after many years in the Bronx), but finally moved to California.