There is no triumph of good, and if there were it would not be a triumph of good.

Socrates wrote nothing. Christ wrote nothing.

The theatre is certainly a place for learning about the brevity of human glory: oh all those wonderful glittering absolutely vanished pantomime! Now I shall abjure magic and become a hermit : put myself in a situation where I can honestly say that I have nothing else to do but to learn to be good.

Eating reveals the characteristic grossness of the human race and also the in-built failure of its satisfactions. We arrive eager, we stuff ourselves and we go away depressed and disappointed and probably feeling a bit queasy into the bargain. It's an image of the déçu in human existence. A greedy start and a stupefied finish. Waiters, who are constantly observing this cycle, must be the most disillusioned of men.

Art is a kind of artificial memory and the pain which attends all serious art is a sense of that factitiousness.

The sending of a letter constitutes a magical grasp upon the future.

You cannot have both truth and what you call civilisation.