Industrial civilization is only possible when there's no self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning.

When one individual comes into intimate contact with another, she—or he, of course, as the case may be—must almost inevitably receive or inflict suffering.

[I am not] the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger.

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

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

Armaments, universal debt and planned obsolescence - those are the three pillars of Western prosperity.

But then people don't read literature in order to understand; they read it because they want to re-live the feelings and sensations which they found exciting in the past. Art can be a lot of things; but in actual practice, most of it is merely the mental equivalent of alcohol and cantharides.