I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle-class morality.

We are the living graves of murdered beasts, slaughtered to satisfy our appetites. How can we hope in this world to attain the peace we say we are so anxious for?

Men get tired of everything, of heaven no less than of hell; and that all history is nothing but a record of the oscillations of the world between these two extremes. An epoch is but a swing of the pendulum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because it is always moving.

I do not waste my time writing pot-boilers: the pot must be boiled, and even my pot au feu has some chunks of fresh meat in it. ...I have no time to boil myself down; and anyhow I could not do so and preserve all the necessary nutriment and the flavoring on which the digestibility depends.

If in the library of your house you do not have the works of the ancient Greek writers, then you live in a house with no light.

The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.

What is wrong with the prosaic Englishman is what is wrong with the prosaic men of all countries: stupidity.