On the one hand, we may tell the truth, regardless of consequences, and on the other hand we may mellow it and sophisticate it to make it humane and tolerable.

The smallest atom of truth represents some man’s bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chuck of it there is a brave truth-seeker’s grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in hell.

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

The theater, when all is said and done, is not life in miniature, but life enormously magnified, life hideously exaggerated.

A man who knows a subject thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams it— this man can always teach it with success, no matter how little he knows of technical pedagogy.

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.

A woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness, his need of an amiable environment, his touching self-delusion.

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother's milk.

What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.