In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

Good friends good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

This poor little one-horse town.

The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.