The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the brother of talk after dinner.

In moments of despair, we look on ourselves lead-enly as objects; we see ourselves, our lives, as someone else might see them and may even be driven to kill ourselves if the separation, the "knowledge," seems sufficiently final.

Modern neurosis began with the discoveries of Copernicus. Science made men feel small by showing him that the earth was not the center of the universe.

I was going to get myself recognized at any price. If I could not win fame by goodness, I was ready to do it by badness.

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

Leisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over Europe in cultivated pastimes: sonneteering, the lute, games and acrostics, travel, gentlemanly studies and sports, hunting and hawking, treated as arts.

An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished question.