We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved.

The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.

With an artist no sane man quarrels, any more than with the colour of a child's eyes.

It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.

To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.