Petty laws breed great crimes.

The radical defect in Christianity is that it tried to win the world by a bribe, and it has become a nullity.

[On Christianity:] Its lip-service and its empty rites have made it the easiest of all tasks for the usurer to cloak his cruelties, the miser to hide his avarice, the lawyer to condone his lies, the sinner of all social sins to purchase the social immunity from them by outward deference to churches.

Charity is a flower not naturally of earthly growth, and it needs manuring with a promise of profit.

Dissimulation is the only thing that makes society possible; without its amenities the world would be a bear-garden.

Belief of some sort is the lifeblood of Art.

Women hope that the dead love may revive; but men know that of all dead things none are so past recall as a dead passion.