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

Funny how people despise platitudes, when they are usually the truest thing going. A thing has to be pretty true before it gets to be a platitude.

The principle of fashion is . . . the principle of the kaleidoscope. A new year can only bring us a new combination of the same elements; and about once in so often we go back and begin again.

The past is discredited because it is not modern. Not to be modern is the great sin. So, perhaps, it is. But every one has, in his day, been modern. And surely even modernity is a poor thing beside immortality. Since we must all die, is it not perhaps better to be a dead lion than a living dog?

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

There are inquiries which are a sort of moral burglary.

... if we have a dollar to spend on some wild excess, we shall spend it on a book, not on asparagus out of season.