Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.
The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.
We are all ill; but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health.
Immature ists imitate. Mature ists steal.
Youth is a time when we find the books we give up but do not get over.
Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming: you are touched at all points and conscious everywhere.