Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work.

I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. 'The first thing,' I said, 'is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.'

No less than war or statecraft, the history of Economics has its heroic ages.

Along this particular stretch of line no express had ever passed. All the trains--the few that there were--stopped at all the stations. Denis knew the names of those stations by heart. Bole, Tritton, Spavin Delawarr, Knipswich for Timpany, West Bowlby, and, finally, Camlet-on-the-Water.

The goal in life is to discover that you’ve always been where you were supposed to be.

I dread the inevitable acceleration of American world domination which will be the result of it all...Europe will no longer be Europe.

In the world of ideas everything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled.