Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. - H. L. Mencken

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.

The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.

I have often argued that a poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. I begin to suspect that there may be some truth in it.