Good books do not make people wiser or happier--only more conscious.
Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.
Great men wait for the right moment to abandon caution. The rest of us abandon it when impatience becomes too much for us.
Lies save trouble now, but may return in thunder and lightning.
Affection reproaches, but does not denounce.
Spirituality now wanders from sex to drugs to art to revolution to violence--whatever seems to promise deliverance from the quotidian.