The creation by word-power of something out of nothing--what is that but magic? And, may I add, what is that but literature?

We lie to ourselves in order that we may still have the excuse of ignorance, the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension, possessing which we can continue with a good conscience to commit and tolerate the most monstrous crimes.

These are the sort of things people ought to look at. Things without pretensions, satisfied to be merely themselves.

A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.

The horror no less than the charm of real life consists precisely in the recurrent actualization of the inconceivable

...we were back at home, and I had returned to that reassuring but profoundly unsatisfactory state known as 'being in one's right mind.

There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all its virtues are of no avail.