Civilisation is a conspiracy.

To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.

To see what is right and not to do it is cowardice. It is never a question of who is right but what is right.

I wondered whether the scientific modern brain could not get to the stage of realising that Space is not an empty homogeneous medium, but full of intricate differences, intelligible and real, though not with our common reality.

I am an ordinary sort of fellow, not braver than other people, but I hate to see a good man downed, and that long knife would not be the end of Scudder if I could play the game in his place.

I believe that all wisdom consists in caring immensely for a few right things, and not caring a straw about the rest.

That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it.