The wholly manly man lacks the wit necessary to give objective form to his soaring and secret dreams, and the wholly womanly woman is apt to be too cynical a creature to dream at all.
God is a Republican, and Santa Claus is a Democrat.
The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.
The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.
I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.
A man’s women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity.
The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.
The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
The most disgusting cad in the world is the man who on the grounds of decorum and morality avoids the game of love. He is one who puts his own ease and security above the most laudable of philanthropies.
One of the things that makes a Negro unpleasant to white folk is the fact that he suffers from their injustice. He is thus a standing rebuke to them.
Goverment is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are the most tolerable are arbitary, cruel, grasping, and unintelligent.
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt.
School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence.
A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and truth in front of patriotic passion.
If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States.
The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.
As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain. It is, I believe, the greatest of human inventions, and by far – much greater than Hell, the radio or the bichloride tablet.
New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.
God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, and the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in his arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; he will set them above their betters.
The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.