If Montaigne is a man in the prime of life sitting in his study on a warm morning and putting down the sum of his experience in his rich, sinewy prose, then Pascal is that same man lying awake in the small hours of the night when death seems very close and every thought is heightened by the apprehension that it may be his last.

We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of the self.

Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of charm.

He [George Orwell] would not blow his nose without moralising on conditions in the handkerchief industry.

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.

How many books did Renoir write on how to paint?

Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.