Kipling, the grandson of a Methodist preacher, reveals the tin-pot evangelist with increasing clarity as youth and its ribaldries pass away and he falls back upon his fundamentals.
We have had more brilliant Presidents than Cleveland, and one or two who were considerably more profound, but we have never had one, at least since Washington, whose fundamental character was solider and more admirable.
To believe that Russia has got rid of the evils of capitalism takes a special kind of mind. It is the same kind of mind that believes that a Holy Roller has got rid of sin.
One does not arise from such a book as Sister Carrie with a smirk of satisfaction; one leaves it infinitely touched.
Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity.
The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably as possible, to give civilized entertainment.
Any defeat, however trivial, may be fatal to a savior of the plain people. They never admire a messiah with a bloody nose.
Wife: a former sweetheart.
New York: A third-rate Babylon.
Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.
Henry James would have been vastly improved as a novelist by a few whiffs of the Chicago stockyard.
The intelligent, like the unintelligent, are responsive to propaganda.
The average man’s love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.
Osteopath – One who argues that all human ills are caused by the pressure of hard bone upon soft tissue. The proof of his theory isto be found in the heads of those who believe it.
The aim of New Deals is to exterminate the class of creditors and thrust all men into that of debtors. It is like trying to breedcattle with all cows and no bulls.
If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe – without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced.
Evil: That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.
My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought...
Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.