Optimism is the last resort of those in deep despair. There can't be any optimists in heaven.

Those who live on vanity must, not unreasonably, expect to die of mortification.

Phrase books seem to be a universal and eternal source of hilarity and I think I know why. Their authors go mad in the course of compiling them.

when a person implores you to be reasonable what he means is that you should speed round forthwith to his point of view.

Our only hope rests on the off-chance that God does exist.

There is a hint of despair in the cry of 'I told you so,' an element of disappointment in the apparent satisfaction when idols turn out to have clay feet. The human race, when it thinks it has proved that no one is superior, is partly gratified and partly depressed.

I think the meaning of the universe is bound up with the egg. ... I am fed up with the meaning of the universe. Everything starts in the egg and ends in death. I think it's called 'the heartbreak at the heart of things.' But then perhaps our very mortality is an egg and at the moment of death our souls will emerge like damp chicks.