Any defeat, however trivial, may be fatal to a savior of the plain people. They never admire a messiah with a bloody nose.

Here is one of the fundamental defects of American fiction--perhaps the one character that sets it off sharply from all other known kinds of contemporary fiction. It habitually exhibits, not a man of delicate organization in revolt against the inexplicable tragedy of existence, but a man of low sensibilities and elemental desires yielding himself gladly to his environment, and so achieving what, under a third-rate civilization, passes for success. To get on: this is the aim. To weigh and reflect, to doubt and rebel: this is the thing to be avoided.

The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman.

A wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.

No sane man objects to palpable lies about him; what he objects to is damaging facts.

The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.

The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.