I'll read, and then I'll take naps. When I feel sleep coming on, I give in and don't fight it.

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

The nation in arms is virtually a communist state: the people must be paid wages and fed and protected and regimented behind the lines as much as on the front. Minds must be kept loyal and at the right pitch of hate, so that successive drafts of fighters are accepted without murmurings. Letters and newspapers must be censored while the propaganda mill grinds on. As for decisions of strategy and overall command, they must please many masters: dissenters in the cabinet, the heads of the allied states and public opinion. Hence failures must be disguised or concealed.

I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.

The educated man had throughout the ages found a way to covert passionate activity into silent and motionless pleasure. He can sit still in a room and not perish.

An artist has every right - one may even say a duty - to exhibit his productions as prominently as he can.

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