To the old, the new is usually bad news.

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.

The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.

There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.

Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.

The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.

It is a sign of creeping inner death when we can no longer praise the living.

We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.

We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.

We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.

Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.

To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.

Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.

It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.

Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.

Facts are counterrevolutionary.

Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.

Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.

A man by himself is in bad company.

When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.

It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.