There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.

Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.

The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the dragon who is wasting fairyland.

The past is not what it was.

The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.

A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive.

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.