There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

I like the Cyclostyle ink; it is so inky. I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such a fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness of mud. It is just the same with people.... When we call a man "manly" or a woman "womanly" we touch the deepest philosophy.

We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera.

The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness of a sick room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy, because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.

Puritanism was an honourable mood; it was a noble fad. In other words, it was a highly creditable mistake.

Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.