“The only man completely at peace is a man without a navel.”

“Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.”

“Then again, in the human body the central point is naturally the navel. For if a man be placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses centered at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom.”

“A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work.”

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing”

“A destruction only man can provoke, only man can prevent. Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures, it is our gift to each other.”

“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.”

“For a lazy man I work awfully hard, I couldn't live without acting. In fact anybody who can live without that feeling is a complete idiot.”

“I had grown a thin mustache, I was a full-grown man, and yet I was completely helpless and without a goal in life.”

“A man without a vote is a man without protection.”