Of all forms of visible otherworldliness, it seems to me, the Gothic is at once the most logical and the most beautiful. It reaches up magnificently-and a good half of it is palpably useless.

It takes no more actual sagacity to carry on the everyday hawking and haggling of the world, or to ladle out its normal doses of bad medicine and worse law, than it takes to operate a taxicab or fry a pan of fish.

It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull. The more a man dreams, the less he believes.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality.

The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.

In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.

No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.

The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must feel and comprehend the vast pressure of the creative passion.

Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.