"Any thought which is printed, either here or in the paper, without subsequent attack is generally believed to be true. This is not so much a logical condition as it is a fault of human nature. A longstanding or constant idea is often equated with a true one."

"“Did you sleep well last night?” asked Glorian. “Yes, I suppose,” said Dore, “although I was trouble by a strange dream.” “Oh? Perhaps it was some sort of omen. Tell me of it.” “Certainly,” said Dore. “I dreamed of a domino.” “Just one?” “Yes, just the one. All night. No people or sounds in the dream, just the domino. The five-three.” “Wonderful!” cried Glorian. “The five-three is a lucky little devil. It presages victory after hardships. It confirms your inner ambition, but counsels you to avoid extremes, to temper pleasure with practicality. Advances in music, art, and drama are indicated. Rely on good manners and good taste. The five-three is a domino of hope and good news.” “Are you making that up?” said Dore suspiciously."

"We tread on unsure ground, theologically. The doctrines are still in the malleable state; what eventually evolves from them will owe its existence not to pre-eminent merit, but to the shrewdness of the compromises made by the factions."

"Now we have the prospect of a religious war on our hands, with the attendant proliferation of “heresies” and two separate but equal inquisitions."

"I do not attempt here to derogate my brother’s reading habits, but merely to indicate the disparity in our interests."

"I see unhealthy signs of a new regime of religiosity and conservatism."

"The only negative thing she had to say was that I displayed a tendency to exaggerate the facts for the sake of interesting reading."

"“I have been waiting for a sign. I knew that if I waited here long enough my bird, that tarishawk that rests here each day, I knew that he would come. Our Mother said that if he flew from the right, then I would have good fortune. If he came from the left, my journey would be disastrous for me, and it would bear no positive fruits for you.” “And the hawk? Which way did it come? Did it come from the left?” Dore smiled once more; his smile was always the most cheerless aspect of him. “The hawk has not come at all,” he said."

"They wait in clutching haste for fate to fill the inside straight of their happiness."

"“How quickly I could clean this desk,” she thought, “if only the wastebasket were larger.”"

"We’re going to tell you about what it’s like, and what just might happen to you, and if you still want to be a writers we’ll know you’re insane."

"Are you lost daddy I arsked tenderly."

"Soon my father had payed the check and gave the waiter a lordly bribe and once more we sprang into the machine and was on our way."

"A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor."

"Roving was good for the writer; to have been a reporter undoubtedly informed Ring Lardner, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Crane. To know far more than he may ever use is imperative for the writer."

"“Be yourself” is about the worst advice you can give some people."

"No brain is stronger than its weakest think."

"Happiness is the feeling we experience when we are too busy to be miserable."

"If you want to be a flaming youth, you must have money to burn."

"Readers of Tom Masson's charming little stories, light essays and graceful verse, would hardly suspect the author of being a constant student of the philosophy of Kant, Schopenhauer and Plato; yet a philosopher Mr. Masson certainly is, and the depth of his philosophy is proven by this gem from his recent volume, A Corner in Women:"

"Prohibition may be a disputed theory, but none can complain that it doesn't hold water."

"The love game is never called off on account of darkness."

"Hamlet is the tragedy of tackling a family problem too soon after college"

"Think of what would happen to us in America if there were no humorists; life would be one long Congressional record."

"Knowing that you possess a talent is half the battle in mastering it."

"Lux forced grief from his mind, thinking grimly of revenge."

"He was reluctantly forced to conclude that his sanity was unshaken."

"“I don’t understand what you mean,” I confessed in a baffled tone. Niamh gave me a long, cool, faintly amused glance. “Don’t you? No, I can see that you do not,” she said. And with that she rolled over, her face turned from me, and fell asleep...leaving me staring at the ceiling, completely mystified, pondering the inexplicable perversities of the female mind."

"Chan’s heart knew only greed, but there was within him enough intelligence to wonder before a man who could see all the uselessness of life, and still exult in the possessing of it."

"What use to covet loot, when even stars must die?"

"Yes, a woman makes a fine weapon in capable hands...slim and supple as a sword blade...and a blade to which no man’s armor is completely proof."

"“And how do you feel?” the Prince asked in a smooth voice. “Better than you look,” Thane grunted."

"Love, it seems, has its own arguments which are so potent that cool Reason can seldom, if ever, prevail."

"He would teach them the rudiments of the rather complicated Oolimarine religious system, but so far he was still sketching in the parameters of the One True Unquestioned Faith, as he termed it. This consisted, in the main, of discovering what they believed in as of the moment. And this was done by asking a series of leading questions, whose replies usually sent him in to shuddery spasms of loathing horror. The Oolimarine folk consider the beliefs of all other humans to be a concoction of nauseating and repulsive spiritual errors, and could only interpret their persistent adherence to their beliefs, in the face of the Self-Evident Sacred Truths, as deliberate perversity."

"Theological disputations are a favorite hobby of mine, but even the most eloquent and learned disputant finds his abilities wane before the persuasiveness of the thumb-lock, the nose-pincers and the molten boot."

"The past has lost, as it always loses; the future has won, as it always wins."

"It pleased Oolb Votz on this occasion to recommend himself to The God in His Aspect of Kaphoom the Sly, Patron of Confidence Men, Charlatans, Swindlers, Phonies, Advertising Executives, and All Priests."

"Day dawned, as day generally does, in so spectacular a manner as to seem rather show-offy were it to be encountered among any less significant meteorological phenomena."

"The expression on his features was one of a pained disapproval, similar to that of a gentleman of the cloth when observing the young folks behaving like young folks."

"“Umm,” said Ooo, dubiously. “Do I detect a questioning tone in your voice?” inquired the bird tartly. “Which might imply that you find a flaw in my reasoning?”"

"The young curate, already pale to the lips, rolled his eyes up until only the whites showed, and began to pray in a trembling, feeble voice. Raised in an ecclesiastical society, where the tenets of the Faith are never argued, having long ago all been decided upon, he had never before been exposed to any difference of opinion on such holy matters. It was, indeed, for him an earth-shaking experience even to be listening to these hideous and pandemonial hallucinations, these nauseously original ideas, each of which gnawed at the roots of his sanity like a voracious worm, until the poor fellow felt his reason began to totter and the foundations of his faith began to shudder and reel."

"The notion that heresy is a crime of the soul, to be cured by the chastisement of the body, he pointed out in his amiable way, contained an essential error. For the soul has no real connection to the body, merely residing therein for the while. To punish the body for the sins of the soul was, therefore, about as irrational as to burn down a tenement building because it had temporarily housed a criminal."

"Sheb being a theocracy was naturally ruled by the priests, and priests are naturally bigoted in favor of their own narrow creed, and intolerant of differences of opinion on theological matters. It’s really too bad that things are that way, but there you are: you have to take the world the way it is, not the way you would prefer it to be."

"“If one doesn’t learn from one’s unhappy experiences,” he wisely observed, “what’s the point of all that suffering?”"

"This life, my dear bird, consists of a haphazard sequence of accidental meetings and partings, very few of which can ever be anticipated, avoided or fully understood. The element of sheer Chance, my friend, conflicting as it does with the first principles of Causation, denies any premeditated plan on the part of Destiny. Destiny, therefore, may only be defined as the sum total of one’s accumulated experiences, which are themselves accidental and purposeless. ‘Purpose,’ you deduce from this, is an interpretation imposed upon a sequence of events after the fact.”"