The snapshots had become almost as dim as memories.

Blood of the world, time staunchless flows; The wound is mortal and is mine.

The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.

Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery.

Eating, drinking, dying - three primary manifestations of the universal and impersonal life. Animals live that impersonal and universal life without knowing its nature. Ordinary people know its nature but don't live it and, if they think seriously about it, refuse to accept it. An enlightened person knows it, lives it, and accepts it completely. He eats, he drinks, and in due course he dies - but he eats with a difference, drinks with a difference, dies with a difference.

If you want to be a psychological novelist and write about human beings, the best thing you can do is keep a pair of cats.