There is held to be no surer test of civilization than the increase per head of the consumption of alcohol and tobacco. Yet alcohol and tobacco are recognizable poisons, so that their consumption has only to be carried far enough to destroy civilization altogether.

The relation of the individual person to the species he belongs to is the most intimate of all relations.

We cannot be sure that we ought not to regard the most criminal country as that which in some aspects possesses the highest civilization.

All arguments are meaningless until we gain personal experience. One must win one's own place in the spiritual world painfully and alone. There is no other way of salvation. The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.

All progress in literary style lies in the heroic resolve to cast aside accretions and exuberances, all the conventions of a past age that were once beautiful because alive and are now false because dead.

What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.

However well organised the foundations of life may be, life must always be full of risks.