When, in the present world, men behave well, that is no doubt sometimes because they are creatures of habit as well as, sometimes, because they are reasonable.

An abundance of some good things is perfectly compatible with the scarcity of others; that life is everywhere precarious, man everywhere small.

There is no conceivable human action which custom has not at one time justified and at another condemned.

Two-legged creatures we are supposed to love as we love ourselves. The four-legged, also, can come to seem pretty important. But six legs are too many from the human standpoint.

Rhetoric takes no real account of the art in literature and morality takes no account of the art in life.

It is disastrous to own more of anything than you can possess, and it is one of the most fundamental laws of human nature that our power actually to possess is limited.

Civilizations die from philosophical calm, irony, and a sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery.