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

Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those who do.

There are only three things which make life worth living: to be writing a tolerably good book, to be in a dinner party of six, and to be traveling south with someone whom your conscience permits you to love.

As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.

The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.

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

An aesthetic movement with a revolutionary dynamism and no popular appeal should proceed quite otherwise than by public scandal, publicity stunt, noisy expulsion and excommunication.