The snapshots had become almost as dim as memories.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.

All war propaganda consists, in the last resort, in substituting diabolical abstractions for human beings. Similarly, those who defend war have invented a pleasant sounding vocabulary of abstractions in which to describe the process of mass murder.

Fortunately, however, birds don't understand pep talks. Not even St. Francis'. Just imagine, he went on, preaching sermons to perfectly good thrushes and goldfinches and chiff-chaffs! What presumption! Why couldn't he have kept his mouth shut and let the birds preach to him?

Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare, it is simply disgraceful.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which mean never losing your enthusiasm.