Experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss-house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing, and hearing the significant thing, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and coordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.

Happiness is a hard master, particularly other people's happiness.

Folly is often more cruel in the consequences than malice can be in the intent.

Drill and uniforms impose an architecture on the crowd. An army's beautiful. But that's not all; it panders to lower instincts than the aesthetic. The spectacle of human beings reduced to automatism satisfies the lust for power. Looking at mechanized slaves, one fancies oneself a master.

One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.

Blood of the world, time staunchless flows; The wound is mortal and is mine.

Nothing — the only perfection, the only absolute. Infinite and eternal nothing.