The disasters of the world are due to its inhabitants not being able to grow old simultaneously. There is always a raw and intolerant nation eager to destroy the tolerant and mellow.

Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth.

A mistake which is commonly made about neurotics is to suppose that they are interesting. It is not interesting to be always unhappy, engrossed with oneself, malignant and ungrateful, and never quite in touch with reality.

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

In the sex war, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female.

It is a mistake to expect good work from expatriates for it is not what they do that matters but what they are not doing.

It is significant comment on the victory of science over magic that were someone to say ‘if I put this pill in your beer it will explode,’ we might believe them; but were they to cry ‘if I pronounce this spell over your beer it will go flat,’ we should remain incredulous and Paracelsus, the Alchemists, Aleister Crowley and all the Magi have lived in vain. Yet when I read science I turn magical; when I study magic, scientific.