The people who fear humor - and they are many - are suspicious of its power to present things in unexpected lights, to question received opinions and to suggest unforeseen possibilities.

Did you know that Puritanism went hand in hand with dirt, that Oliver Cromwell put a 100 per cent tax on soap and that the repeal of the soap tax was one of the most popular acts of Charles II at his Restoration?

Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.

The people of the United States, perhaps more than any other nation in history, love to abase themselves and proclaim their unworthiness, and seem to find refreshment in doing so... That is a dark frivolity, but still frivolity.

The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.

Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

Be sure to choose what you believe and why you believe it, because if you don't choose your beliefs, you may be certain that some belief, and probably not a very credible one, will choose you.