All revolutions have failed? Perhaps. But rebellion for good cause is self- justifying -- a good in itself. Rebellion transforms slaves into human beings, if only for an hour.

The Proustian aquarium: grotesque and gorgeous fish drifting with languid fins through a subaqueous medium of pale violet polluted ink.

All governments need enemies. How else to justify their existence?

We live in the kind of world where courage is the most essential of virtues; without courage, the other virtues are useless.

The "terror" of the French Revolution lasted for ten years. The terror that preceded and led to it lasted for a thousand years.

Literary critics, like a herd of cows or a school of fish, always face in the same direction, obeying that love for unity that every critic requires.

There comes a point, in literary objectivity, when the author's self- effacement is hard to distinguish from moral cowardice.