Happiness ain't a thing in itself - it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant.

In America-as elsewhere-free speech is confined to the dead.

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.

Constellations have always been troublesome things to name. If you give one of them a fanciful name, it will always refuse to live up to it; it will always persist in not resembling the thing it has been named for.

Adam and Eve entered the world naked and unashamed - naked and pure-minded. And no descendant of theirs has ever entered it otherwise. All have entered it naked, unashamed, and clean in mind. They entered it modest. They had to acquire immodesty in the soiled mind, there was no other way to get it. ... The convention mis-called "modesty" has no standard, and cannot have one, because it is opposed to nature and reason and is therefore an artificiality and subject to anyone's whim - anyone's diseased caprice.

Begin with the determination to succeed and the work is half done already.

Wagner has some great moments, but a lot of miserable half hours.