Birds sat on the telegraph wires that spanned the river as the black notes sit on a staff of music.

It would be no loss to the world if most of the writers now writing had been strangled at birth.

All disgrace smells alike. Differences in ruin are only matters of degree.

The case against religion is the responsibility of God for the sufferings of mankind, which makes it impossible to believe the good things said about Him in the Bible, and consequently to believe anything it says about Him.

a good oyster cannot please the palate as acutely as a bad one can revolt it, and a good oyster cannot make him who eats it live for ever though a bad one can make him dead for ever.

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.

Humanity is never more sphinxlike than when it is expressing itself.