Death is the only thing we haven't succeeded in completely vulgarizing.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.

I think that fiction and, as I say, history and biography are immensely important, not only for their own sake, because they provide a picture of life now and of life in the past, but also as vehicles for the expression of general philosophic ideas, religious ideas, social ideas.

Folly is often more cruel in the consequences than malice can be in the intent.

Oh, how desperately bored, in spite of their grim determination to have a Good Time, the majority of pleasure-seekers really are!

I was born wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born, and have made, in a curious way, the worst of both.

You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases.