In youth the life of reason is not in itself sufficient; afterwards the life of emotion, except for short periods, becomes unbearable.

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

There is immunity in reading, immunity in formal society, in office routine, in the company of old friends and in the giving of officious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another. The past with its anguish will break through every defense-line of custom and habit; we must sleep and therefore we must dream.

Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be encountered. Proust in Venice, Matisse's birdcages overlooking the flower market at Nice, Gide on the seventeenth-century quais of Toulon, Lorca in Granada, Picasso by Saint-Germain-des-Prés: there lies civilization and for me it can exist only under those liberal regimes in which the Present is alive and therefore capable of assimilating the Past.

The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.

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

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