The true cook is the perfect blend, the only perfect blend, of artist and philosopher. He knows his worth: he holds in his palm the happiness of mankind, the welfare of generations yet unborn.

Never take a solemn oath. People think you mean it.

Shall I give you my recipe for happiness? I find everything useful and nothing indispensable. I find everything wonderful and nothing miraculous. I reverence the body. I avoid first causes like the plague.

He talks about the Scylla of Atheism and the Charybdis of Christianity - a state of mind which, by the way, is not conducive to bold navigation.

It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half-rude.

I can find no room in my cosmos for a deity save as a waste product of human weakness, the excrement of the imagination.

Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.