Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.

Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate; a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.

The Expulsion from Eden is an act of vindictive womanish spite; the Fall of Man, as recounted in the Bible, comes nearer to the Fall of God.

A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends.

Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.

The only happy talkers are dandies who extract pleasure from the very perishability of their material and who would not be able to tolerate the isolation of all other forms of composition; for most good talkers, when they have run down, are miserable; they know that they have betrayed themselves, that they have taken material which should have a life of its own, to dispense it in noises upon the air.

The greatest problem with women is how to contrive that they should seem our equals