The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather.

It is told of Faraday that he refused to be called a physicist; he very much disliked the new name as being too special and particular and insisted on the old one, philosopher, in all its spacious generality: we may suppose that this was his way of saying that he had not over-ridden the limiting conditions of class only to submit to the limitation of a profession.

What marks the artist is his power to shape the material of pain we all have.

Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.

Reasons for not keeping a notebook: 1) the ambiguity of the reader

Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony.

At the bottom of at least popular Marxism there has always been a kind of disgust with humanity as it is and a perfect faith in humanity as it is to be.