To delve into history entails, besides the grievance of hard work, the danger that in the depths one may lose one’s scapegoats.

Since in every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition, an imperialist party demanding a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party demanding the conquest of power and a racialist party demanding internal purges against aliens - all of them, when appeals to greed and glory failed, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which was to say science incarnate.

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.

Vanity is a static thing. It puts it faith in what it has, and is easily wounded. Pride is active, and satisfied only with what it can do, hence accustomed not to feel small stings.

Bad writing, it is easily verified, has never kept scholarship from being published.

The ascetic is often a sensualist who has reached the limit of his capacity.

[T]hat is the triumph of history - truth absolute is not at hand; the original with which to match the copy does not exist.