Unhappy people are dangerous.

Why must you always try to be omnipotent, and shove things about? Tragic things happen sometimes that we just have to submit to.

it is necessary that we should all have a little of the will to die, because otherwise we would find the performance of our biological duty of death too difficult.

Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.

... when the Spaniards persecuted heretics they may have been crude, but they were not being unreasonable or unpractical. They were at least wiser than the people of to-day who pretend that it does not matter what a man believes, as who should say that the flavour and digestibility of a pudding will have nothing to do with its ingredients.

But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example.

Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization. ... The first thing a woman does when she gets a little money into her hands is to hire some other poor wretch to do her housework.