I cannot think that espionage can be recommended as a technique for building an impressive civilization. It's a lout's game.

It is the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.

Babbitt as a book was planless; its end arrived apparently because its author had come to the end of the writing-pad, or rather, one might suspect from its length, to the end of all writing-pads then on the market.

Unhappy people are dangerous.

Great music is in a sense serene; it is certain of the values it asserts.

A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige throughbeing mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.

Motherhood is neither a duty nor a privilege, but simply the way that humanity can satisfy the desire for physical immortality and triumph over the fear of death.