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

One does not arise from such a book as Sister Carrie with a smirk of satisfaction; one leaves it infinitely touched.

The theatre, when all is said and done, is not life in miniature, but life enormously magnified, life hideously exaggerated.

The book of Genesis, a farrago of nonsense so wholly absurd that even Sunday-school scholars have to be threatened with Hell to make them accept it.

I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.

Whenever I write anything that sets up controversy its meaning is distorted almost instantly. Even the editorial writers of newspapers seem to be unable to understand the plainest sentence.

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.