What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor

No married woman ever trusts her husband absolutely, nor does she ever act as if she did trust him. Her utmost confidence is as wary as an American pickpocket's confidence that the policeman on the beat will stay bought.

Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for.

Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.

The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.

Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.

To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies- the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said - there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.