Conventional manners are a kind of literacy test for the alien who comes among us.

Civilization is merely an advance in taste: accepting, all the time, nicer things, and rejecting nasty ones.

Successful socialism depends on the perfectibility of man. Unless all, or nearly all, men are high-minded and clear-sighted, it isbound to be a rotten failure in any but a physical sense. Even through it is altruism, socialism means materialism. You can guarantee the things of the body to every one, but you cannot guarantee the things of the spirit to every one; you can guarantee only that the opportunity to seek them shall not be denied to any one who chooses to seek them.

Nothing makes people so worthy of compliments as receiving them. One is more delightful for being told one is delightful-just as one is more angry for being told one is angry.

You can bear anything if it is not your fault.

Educational legislation nowadays is largely in the hands of illiterate people, and the illiterate will take good care that their illiteracy is not made a reproach on them.

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.