Energy is the inherent effort of every multiplicity to become unity.

A society in stable equilibrium is-by definition-one that has no history and wants no historians.

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.

An American Virgin would never dare command; an American Venus would never dare exist.

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

Double standards are inspiration to men of letters, but they are apt to be fatal to politicians.

The study of history is useful to the historian by teaching him his ignorance of women.

Young men have a passion for regarding their elders as senile.

The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of the time that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimony to her direct action and constant presence in every moment and form of the illusion which men thought they thought their existence.

Whenever a man reaches the top of the political ladder, his enemies unite to pull him down. His friends become critical and exacting.

Morality is a private and costly luxury.

The world never loved perfect poise. What the world does love is commonly absence of poise, for it has to be amused.

Although the Senate is much given to admiring in its members a superiority less obvious or quite invisible to outsiders, one Senator seldom proclaims his own inferiority to another, and still more seldom likes to be told of it.

At best, the renewal of broken relations is a nervous matter.

The social side of Washington was to be taken for granted as three-fourths of existence. Politics and reform became the detail, and waltzing the profession.

A man must now swallow more belief than he can digest.

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers.

Unbroken Evolution under uniform conditions pleased every one -- except curates and bishops; it was the very best substitute for religion; a safe, conservative practical, thoroughly Common-Law deity.

The proper study of mankind is woman.