A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion, for instinctual drives must be satisfied

While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.

There cannot be a personal God without a pessimistic religion. As soon as there is a personal God he is a disappointing God.

Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.

Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.

The true work of art is the one which the seventh wave of genius throws up the beach where the undertow of time cannot drag it back.

In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other's affairs, who come out together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude.