Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.

The tourist was the great conservative who hated novelty and adored dirt.

I would rather starve and rot and keep the privilege of speaking the truth as I see it, than of holding all the offices that capital has to give from the presidency down.

It [love] is a disease to be born with patience, like any nervous complaint, and to be treated with counter-irritants.

The Woman had once been supreme; in France she still seemed potent, not merely as a sentiment but as a force; why was she unknownin America? for evidently America was ashamed of her, and she was ashamed of herself, otherwise they would not have strewn fig-leaves so profusely all over her. When she was a true force, she was ignorant of fig-leaves, but the monthly-magazine-made American female had not a feature that would have been recognized by Adam. The trait was notorious, and often humorous, but anyone brought up among Puritans knew that sex was sin. In any previous age, sex was strength.

Morality is a private and costly luxury.

It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.