There is no rest for the humble except in despising the great, whose only thought of the people is inspired by self-interest or sadism.

The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don't go to a war, and even more to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy. It's always so.

To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose.

When you stay too long in the same place, things and people go to pot on you, they rot and start stinking for your special benefit.

The whole business of your life overwhelms you when you live alone. One's stupefied by it. To get rid of it you try to daub some of it off on to people who come to see you, and they hate that. To be alone trains one for death.

With two thousand years of Christianity behind him... a man can't see a regiment of soldiers march past without going off the deep end. It starts off far too many ideas in his head.

Poor people never, or hardly ever, ask for an explanation of all they have to put up with. They hate one another, and content themselves with that.