The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.
When we appropriate money from the public funds to pay for vaccinating a horde of negroes, we do not do it because we have any sympathy for them or because we crave their blessings, but simply because we don’t want them to be falling ill of smallpox.
Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.
Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.
Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.
There comes a time in every man’s life when he’s consumed by the desire to spit on his palms, hoist the black flag and start cutting throats.
Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent – slimy, sneaking and abominable.
A Puritan is someone who is desperately afraid that, somewhere, someone might be having a good time.
The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.
There are two impossibilities in life: “just one drink” and “an honest politician.”
Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the congenitally sinful, who know when to play with it and when to let it alone.
No one hates his job so heartily as a farmer.
No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for her.
It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.
The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him.
All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely.
Truth – Something somehow discreditable to someone.
Archbishop – A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.