There is nothing rarer than a man who can be trusted never to throw away happiness, however eagerly he sometimes grasps it. In history we are as frequently interested in our own doom.

It would be no loss to the world if most of the writers now writing had been strangled at birth.

It seemed a good idea at the time.

A child is an adult temporarily enduring conditions which exclude the possibility of happiness.

Getting a divorce is nearly always as cheerful and useful an occupation as breaking valuable china.

No great thing happens suddenly.

Were I to go down into the market-place, armed with the powers of witchcraft, and take a peasant by the shoulders and whisper to him, 'In your lifetime, have you known peace?' wait for his answer, shake his shoulders and transform him into his father, and ask him the same question, and transform him in his turn to his father, I would never hear the word 'Yes,' if I carried my questioning of the dead back for a thousand years. I would always hear, 'No, there was fear, there were our enemies without, our rulers within, there was prison, there was torture, there was violent death.