You know, you can make a small mistake in language or etiquette in Britain, or you could when I was younger, and really be made to feel it, and it's the flick of a lash, but it would sting, and especially at school where there's not much privacy, and so on. You could, yes, undoubtedly be made to feel crushed.

In the early days of the December that my father was to die, my younger brother brought me the news that I was a Jew. I was then a transplanted Englishman in America, married, with one son and, though unconsoled by any religion, a nonbelieving member of two Christian churches. On hearing the tidings, I was pleased to find that I was pleased.

The fragility of love is what is most at stake here—humanity's most crucial three-word avowal is often uttered only to find itself suddenly embarrassing or orphaned or isolated or ill-timed—but strangely enough it can work better as a literal or reassuring statement than a transcendent or numinous or ecstatic one.

The people who must never have power are the humorless. To impossible certainties of rectitude they ally tedium and uniformity

Skepticism rather than credulity is the highest principle that the human intellect can use to ennoble our existence.

Allow a friend to believe in a bogus prospectus or a false promise and you cease, after a short while, to be a friend at all.

People know when they are being lied to, they know when their rulers are absurd, they know they do not love their chains.