Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire; the other is to get it.

The popular definition of tragedy is heavy drama in which everyone is killed in the last act, comedy being light drama in which everyone is married in the last act.

We are more gullible and superstitious today than we were in the Middle Ages, and an example of modern credulity is the widespread belief that the Earth is round. The average man can advance not a single reason for thinking that the Earth is round. He merely swallows this theory because there is something about it that appeals to the twentieth century mentality.

We all have--to put it as nicely as I can--our lower centres and our higher centres. Our lower centres act: they act with terriblepower that sometimes destroys us; but they don't talk.... Since the war the lower centres have become vocal. And the effect is that of an earthquake. For they speak truths that have never been spoken before--truths that the makers of our domestic institutions have tried to ignore.

The goal of an artist is to create the definitive work that cannot be surpassed.

There is nothing more dangerous than the conscience of a bigot.

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.