The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else--we are the busiest people in the world.

There is probably nothing more sublime than discontent transmuted into a work of art, a scientific discovery, and so on.

It is startling to see how the oppressed almost invariably shape themselves in the image of their hated oppressors.

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.

Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.

The unpredictability inherent in human affairs is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product.

We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.