Reality cannot be ignored except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.

The condition of being forgiven is self-abandonment. The proud man prefers self-reproach, however painful --because the reproached self isn't abandoned; it remains intact.

Human contacts have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment.... The world, you must remember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium.

Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.

I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.

he had been making an unsuccessful effort to write something about nothing in particular

Love is as necessary to human beings as food and shelter; [but] without intelligence, ... love is impotent and freedom unattainable.