The notion that Nature does not proceed by jumps is only one of the budget of plausible lies that we call classical education. Nature always proceeds by jumps. She may spend twenty thousand years making up her mind to jump; but when she makes it up at last, the jump is big enough to take us into a new age.

The degree of tolerance attainable at any moment depends on the strain under which society is maintaining its cohesion.

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

To a professional critic (I have been one myself) theatre-going is the curse of Adam. The play is the evil he is paid to endure in the sweat of his brow; and the sooner it is over, the better.

The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.