Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate.

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.

The aim of poetry, it appears, is to fill the mind with lofty thoughts--not to give it joy, but to give it a grand and somewhat gaudy sense of virtue. The essay is a weapon against the degenerate tendencies of the age. The novel, properly conceived, is a means of uplifting the spirit; its aim is to inspire, not merely to satisfy the low curiosity of man in man.

Philosophy, as the modern world knows it, is only intellectual club-swinging.

Man's objection to love is that it dies hard: women's, that when it is dead it stays dead.

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

Skin diseases are something doctors like, the patient neither dies nor gets well.