On any morning these days whole segments of the population wake up to find themselves famous, while, to keep matters shipshape, whole contingents of celebrities wake up to find themselves forgotten.

Ours is not so much an age of vulgarity as of vulgarization; everything is tampered with or touched up, or adulterated or watered down, in an effort to make it palatable, in an effort to make it pay.

The moving van is a symbol of more than our restlessness, it is the most conclusive evidence possible of our progress.

Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it makes us vain, in fact, of our modesty.

In the history of mankind, fanaticism has caused more harm than vice.

It is disgusting to pick your teeth; what is vulgar is to use a gold toothpick.

On a very rough-and-ready basis we might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others. An eccentric puts ice cream on steak simply because he likes it; should a crank do so, he would endow the act with moral grandeur and straightaway denounce as sinners (or reactionaries) all who failed to follow suit. Cranks, at their most familiar, are a sort of peevish prophets, and it's not enough that they should be in the right; others must also be in the wrong.