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.

The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.

An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity.

All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost.

I am at one with my duality.

The man who kills a man kills a man. The man who kills himself kills all men. As far as he is concerned, he wipes out the world.

It seems a pity that psychology has destroyed all our knowledge of human nature.