Look for all fancy wordings and get rid of themAvoid all terms and expressions, old or new, that embody affectation.

Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.

In a large university, there are as many deans and executive heads as there are schools and departments. Their relations to one another are intricate and periodic; in fact, "galaxy" is too loose a term: it is a planetarium of deans with the President of the University as a central sun. One can see eclipses, inner systems, and oppositions.

Maxims in times of danger are useless, experience is incommunicable. The knotted strands of life, desire, assumptions, and moral codes cannot be unsnarled; they can only be cut, which is what happens when an air raid occurs, with a silencing fortissimo like the finale of a Beethoven symphony.

The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works.

Since it is seldom clear whether intellectual activity denotes a superior mode of being or a vital deficiency, opinion swings between considering intellect a privilege and seeing it as a handicap

By the time I was 9, I had the conviction that everybody in the world was an artist except plumbers or people who delivered groceries.