Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication ...from within, a sort of invisible champagne.... Americans do not need to drink to inspire them to do anything, though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper and more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of h...imself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson colour of it should creep into his vote.... The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People accuse journalism of being too personal; but to me it has always seemed far too impersonal. It is charged with tearing away... the veils from private life; but it seems to me to be always dropping diaphanous but blinding veils between men and men. The Yellow Press is abused for exposing facts which are private; I wish the Yellow Press did anything so valuable. It is exactly the decisive individual touches that it never gives; and a proof of this is that after one has met a man a million times in the newspapers it is always a complete shock and reversal to meet him in real life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Among the Very Rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will nev...er give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For your God of dream or devil You will answer, not to me.... Talk about the pews and steeples And the Cash that goes therewith! But the souls of Christian peoples . . . Chuck it, Smith!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of t...he great epics is past.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
White ... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black.... God p...aints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a colour. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral ...dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »