The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.

Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.

Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.

Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.

Life is a dead-end street.

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.

Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.

Time stays, we go.

If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

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.

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.

Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.

Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.

A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.