‎"But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.

The sum of evil, Pascal remarked, would be much diminished if men could only learn to sit quietly in their rooms.

Pure Spirit, one hundred degrees proof - that's a drink that only the most hardened contemplation-guzzlers indulge in. Bodhisattvas dilute their Nirvana with equal parts of love and work.

Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?

In books, the proportion of exceptional to commonplace people is high; in reality, very low.

Being cared for when one is dead is less satisfactory than being cared for when one is alive.

Liberties are not given, they are taken.