Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.
Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
Time stays, we go.
We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.
Honor is simply the morality of superior men.
To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered there is only error to be exposed.
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
experience, love & women
To die for an idea it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.
Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
Husbands never become good they merely become proficient.
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
art, government & science
Bachelors know more about women than married men if they didn't they'd be married too.
All government, of course, is against liberty.
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.
We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later for another thing, they die earlier.
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.
Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
experience, men, wisdom & women
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.