All great civilisations, in their early stages, are based on success in war.

Ruthless, greedy, tyrannical, disreputable... they have had one principle worth all the rest, the principle of delight!

All great civilisations, in their early stages, are based on success in war.

I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people's feelings by satisfying our own egos.

Opera, next to Gothic architecture, is one of the strangest inventions of Western man. It could not have been foreseen by any logical process.

Fine colour implies a unified relationship, in which each part is subordinate to the whole, and the transitions between them are felt to be as precious and beautiful as the colours themselves. In fact, the colours themselves must be continuously modified and broken as part of the transition.

Sweeping, confident articles on the future seem to me, intellectually, the most disreputable of all forms of public utterance.