An essay is a thing of the imagination. If there is information in an essay, it is by-the-by, and if there is an opinion, one need not trust it for the long run. A genuine essay rarely has an educational, polemical, or sociopolitical use; it is the movement of a free mind at play.

We are so placid that the smallest tremor of objection is taken as a full-scale revolution.

What I felt then I feel now: the inexorable, unchanging interior hum of doubt and hope.

Is there a word more passionate than passion? Obsession, total immersion, the feeling that everything else doesn't matter.

The imagination is a species of knowledge, knowledge that can take the form of discovery.

It is useless either to hate or to love truth - but it should be noticed.

Of comic novels that have quaffed the elixir of 'classic': Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm.