I think it [presidency of Dwight Eisenhower] came too late and I think that he is not on the wavelength of this dreadful time through which we're living.

The only ultimate disaster that can befall us is to feel ourselves at home on this earth.

This life in us; however low it flickers or fiercely burns, is still a divine flame which no man dare presume to put out, be his motives never so humane and enlightened; To suppose otherwise is to countenance a death-wish; Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other.

The three most disastrous inventions of our time have been the birth control pill, the camera and nuclear weaponry. The first offers sex in terms of sterility, the second reality in terms of fantasy, and the third security in terms of destruction.

It has to be admitted that we English have sex on the brain, which is a very unsatisfactory place to have it.

When St. Teresa of Avila says, 'Our life in this world is like a night in a second class hotel' I agree with her absolutely; and I think it's almost insulting to God and man to suggest that trivial events should give rise to deep concern on his part.

Everything Tolstoy wrote is precious, but I found this final statement of the truth about life as he had come to understand it particularly beautiful and moving. 'That is what I have wanted to say to you, my brothers. Before I died.' So he concludes, giving one a vivid sense of the old man, pen in hand and bent over the paper, his forehead wrinkled into a look of puzzlement very characteristic of him, as though he were perpetually wondering how others could fail to see what was to him so clear - that the law of love explained all mysteries and invalidated all other laws.