As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.

The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art.

Every American bride is taken there [Niagara Falls], and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life.

The worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.

Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

When I see a spade, I call it a spade. I'm glad to say I have never seen a spade. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use it. It's the only thing he's fit for.