The idea of Macbeth as a conscience-torm ented man is a platitude as false as Macbeth himself. Macbeth has no conscience. His main concern throughout the play is that most selfish of all concerns: to get a good night's sleep.

The desire to believe the best of people is a prerequisite for intercourse with strangers; suspicion is reserved for friends.

Life is a system of recurrent pairs, the poison and the antidote being eternally packaged together by some considerate heavenly druggist.

If someone tells you he is going to make a 'realistic decision', you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.

Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted. Spicy court-memoirs, the lives of gallant ladies, recollections of an ex-nun, a monk's confession, an atheist's repentance, true-to-life accounts of prostitution and bastardy gave our ancestors a penny peep into the forbidden room.

For self-realization, a rebel demands a strong authority, a worthy opponent, God to his Lucifer.

...the tourist Venice is Venice.