A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.

America has a new delicacy, a coarse, rank refinement.

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

I still think sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin.

Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else.

A man running after a hat is not half so ridiculous as a man running after a woman.

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.