Apart from letters, it is the vulgar custom of the moment to deride the thinkers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras; yet there has not been, in all history, another agewhen so much sheer mental energy was directed toward creating a fairer social order.

When this immediate evil power has been defeated, we shall not yet have won the long battle with the elemental barbarities. Another Hitler, it may be an invisible adversary, will attempt, again, and yet again, to destroy our frail civilization. Is it true, I wonder, that the only way to escape a war is to be in it? When one is a part of an actuality does the imagination find a release?

The world of the egotist is, inevitably, a narrow world, and the boundaries of self are limited to the close horizon of personality.... But, within this horizon, there is room for many attributes that are excellent.

irony is an indispensable ingredient of the critical vision; it is the safest antidote to sentimental decay.

I have written chiefly because, though I have often dreaded the necessity, I have found it more painful, in the end, not to write.

Nothing in life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it.

No, one couldn't make a revolution, one couldn't even start a riot, with sheep that asked only for better browsing.