We can’t turn life into a pleasure. But we can choose such pleasures as are worthy of us and our immortal souls.

A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence.

It is often a mistake to combine two pleasures, because pleasures, like pains, can act as counter-irri-tants to each other.

If you'd take your head home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can't say. But it might.

I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller

I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.

We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper.