Truth can understand error, but error cannot understand truth.

No man's really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be.

The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."

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.

Is there anyone... who will maintain that the Party System could have been created by people particularly fond of truth?

It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch.

But pure wit is akin to Puritanism; to the perfect and painful consciousness of the final fact in the universe. Very briefly, the man who sees the consistency in things is a wit - and a Calvinist. The man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist - and a Catholic.