The insidiousness of science lies in its claim to be not a subject, but a method.

Culture' means a long receptivity to things of the mind and the spirit.

Simplicity is an acquired taste. Mankind, left free, instinctively complicates life.

Most men have always wanted as much as they could get; and possession has always blunted the fine edge of their altruism.

The very notion of tabu is one of the rightest notions in the world. Better any old tabu than none, for a man cannot be said to be"on the side of the stars" at all, unless he makes refusals.

Society, by insisting on conventions, has merely insisted on certain convenient signs by which we may know that a man is considering, in daily life, the comfort of other people.

... when you make it a moral necessity for the young to dabble in all the subjects that the books on the top shelf are written about, you kill two very large birds with one stone: you satisfy precious curiosities, and you make them believe that they know as much about life as people who really know something. If college boys are solemnly advised to listen to lectures on prostitution, they will listen; and who is to blame if some time, in a less moral moment, they profit by their information?