democracy always makes for materialism, because the only kind of equality that you can guarantee to a whole people is, broadly speaking, physical.

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

No convention gets to be a convention at all except by grace of a lot of clever and powerful people first inventing it, and then imposing it on others. You can be pretty sure, if you are strictly conventional, that you are following genius--a long way off. And unless you are a genius yourself, that is a good thing to do.

I know exaggerators of both kinds: people whose lies are only picturesque adjectives, and people whose picturesque adjectives are only lies.

All violations of essential privacy are brutalizing.

For never doubt that those souls who live least by the flesh feel themselves most defiled by its defilement.

... it is a great mistake to confuse conventionality with simplicity ... it takes a good deal of intelligence and a great many inhibitions to follow a social code.