Of the significant and pleasurable experiences of life only the simplest are open indiscriminately to all. The rest cannot be had except by those who have undergone a suitable training.

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

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.

When truth is nothing but truth, it's unnatural, it's an abstraction that resembles nothing in the real world.

For the born traveller, travelling is a besetting vice. Like other vices, it is imperious, demanding its victim's time, money, energy and the sacrifice of comfort.

People travel for the same reason as they collect works of art: because the best people do it.

I know quite well that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like that; one can't write really well about anything else. Why was that old fellow such a marvelous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about. You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases.