A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.

If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe--without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced.

The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother's milk.

A man is called a good fellow for doing things which, if done by a woman, would land her in a lunatic asylum.

The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes the worst cigars.

The martini: the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.

Henry James would have been vastly improved as a novelist by a few whiffs of the Chicago stockyard.