The Byzantines hammered away at their hard and orthodox symbols, because they could not be in a mood to believe that men could take a hint. The moderns drag out into lengths and reels of extravagance their new orthodoxy of being unorthodox, because they also cannot give a hint -- or take a hint. Yet all perfect and well-poised art is really a hint.

Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.

They say travel broadens the mind, but you must have the mind.

It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad.

In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic.

Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.

There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle.