It could not have been ten seconds, and yet it seemed a long time that their hands were clasped together. He had time to learn every detail of her hand.

I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.

By the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it.

Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain.

Winston Churchill could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war.