There is a prodigious selfishness in dreams: they live perfectly deaf and invulnerable amid the cries of the real world.

If artists and poets are unhappy, it is after all because happiness does not interest them.

Oaths are the fossils of piety.

There is (as I now find) no remorse for time long past, even for what may have mortified us or made us ashamed of ourselves when it was happening: there is a pleasant panoramic sense of what it all was and how it all had to be. Why, if we are not vain or snobbish, need we desire that it should have been different? The better things we missed may yet be enjoyed or attained by someone else somewhere: why isn't that just as good? And there is no regret, either, in the sense of wishing the past to return, or missing it: it is quite real enough as it is, there at its own date and place.

Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.

It is true that I am carrying out various methods of treatment recommended by doctors and dentists in the hope of dying in the remote future in perfect health.

Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.