A man cannot deserve adventures; he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs.

By experts in poverty I do not mean sociologists, but poor men.

Because our expression is imperfect we need friendship to fill up the imperfections.

Your next-door neighbor is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a piano; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours.

I would never commit the positively anti-social action of robbing a bank, or worse still, working in one.

[Buddhism and Christianity] are in one sense parallel and equal; as a mound and a hollow, as a valley and a hill. There is a sense in which that sublime despair is the only alternative to that divine audacity. It is even true that the truly spiritual and intellectual man sees it as sort of dilemma; a very hard and terrible choice. There is little else on earth that can compare with these for completeness. And he who does not climb the mountain of Christ does indeed fall into the abyss of Buddha.

Every work of art has one indispensable mark ... the center of it is simple, however much the fulfillment may be complicated.