The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.

I had come to Yugoslavia to see what history meant in flesh and blood.

... 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.

All disgrace smells alike. Differences in ruin are only matters of degree.

The case against religion is the responsibility of God for the sufferings of mankind, which makes it impossible to believe the good things said about Him in the Bible, and consequently to believe anything it says about Him.

It is not possible that a just God should forgive people who are wicked because another person who was good endured agony by being nailed to a cross.

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.