The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.

An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity.

Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation in turn becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources - and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on in the future.

I don't think it's possible to write a good novel around a negative personality.

Dictatorships are one-way streets. Democracy boasts two-way traffic.

The less one notices happiness, the greater it is.

The novel as we knew it in the nineteenth century was killed off by Proust and Joyce.