It is natural to believe in God when you're alone-- quite alone, in the night, thinking about death.

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

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.

Official dignity tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the office is held.

Liberty? Why it doesn't exist. There is no liberty in this world, just gilded cages.

The traveller's-eye view of men and women is not satisfying. A man might spend his life in trains and restaurants and know nothing of humanity at the end. To know, one must be an actor as well as a spectator.

If the men of the Middle Ages... lived in filth and discomfort, it was not for any lack of ability to change their mode of life; it was because they chose to live this way, because filth and discomfort fitted in with their principles and prejudices, political, moral, and religious.... It was in the power of medieval... craftsmen to create armchairs and sofas that might have rivaled in comfort those of today