The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.

The French use cooking as a means of self-expression, and this meal perfectly represented the personality of a cook who had spent the morning resting her unwashed chin on the edge of a tureen, pondering whether she should end her life immediately by plunging her head into her abominable soup.

Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.

Charity is an ugly trick. It is a virtue grown by the rich on the graves of the poor. Unless it is accompanied by sincere revolt against the present social system, it is a cheap moral swagger. In former times it was used as fire insurance by the rich, but now that the fear of Hell has gone along with the rest of revealed religion, it is used either to gild mean lives with nobility or as a political instrument.

Economists are like Aeolian harps, and the sounds that issue from them are determined by the winds that blow.

Great music is in a sense serene; it is certain of the values it asserts.

But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example.