However toplofty and idealistic a man may be, he can always rationalize his right to earn money.

She hung up and I set out the chess board. I filled a pipe, paraded the chessmen and inspected them for French shaves and loose buttons, and played a championship tournament game between Gortchakoff and Meninkin, seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armour, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.

All art at some time and in some manner becomes mass entertainment, and if it does not it dies and is forgotten.

It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

Most people go through life using up half their energy trying to protect a dignity they never had

The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.