Thought of the incomprehensible sequence of changes and chances that make up a life, all the beauties and horrors and absurdities whose conjunctions create the uninterpretable and yet divinely significant pattern of human destiny.

These are the sort of things people ought to look at. Things without pretensions, satisfied to be merely themselves.

Every idol, however exalted, turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for human sacrifice.

For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.

Procrustes in modern dress, the nuclear scientist will prepare the bed on which mankind must lie; and if mankind doesn’t fit—well, that will be just too bad for mankind. There will have to be some stretching and a bit of amputation—the same sort of stretching and amputations as have been going on ever since applied science really got going into its stride, only this time they will be a good deal more drastic than in the past. These far from painless operations will be directed by highly centralized totalitarian governments.

Round pegs in square holes tend to have dangerous thoughts about the social system and tend to infect others with their discontents.

Only times and places, only names and ghosts.