... the more we recruit from immigrants who bring no personal traditions with them, the more America is going to ignore the things of the spirit. No one whose consuming desire is either for food or for motor-cars is going to care about culture, or even know what it is.

The indiscreet questioner - and by indiscreet questions I mean questions which it is not conceivably a man's duty either to the community or to any individual to answer - is a marauder, and there is every excuse for treating him as such.

Do you see any majority, anywhere, in this imperfect and irreligious world, admitting that the minority is precious? That any minority is precious?

You can bear anything if it is not your fault.

No fashion has ever been created expressly for the lean purse or for the fat woman: the dressmaker's ideal is the thin millionaires.

men demand everything and are not satisfied until sex blinds them into thinking they have got it.

... 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?