Anthologies are mischievous things. Some years ago there was a rage for chemically predigested food, which was only suppressed when doctors pointed out that since human beings had been given teeth and digestive organs they had to be used or they degenerated very rapidly. Anthologies are predigested food for the brain.

I don't believe that to understand is necessarily to pardon, but I feel that to understand makes one forget that one cannot pardon.

We think in youth that our bodies are identical to ourselves and have the same interests, but discover later in life that they are heartless companions who have been accidentally yoked with us, and who are as likely as not, in our extreme sickness or old age, to treat us with less mercy than we would have received at the hands of the worst bandits.

All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears.

The delight we find in art amounts to recognition of a saving grace, to an acknowledgment that the problem of life has a solution implicit in its own nature, though not yet formulated by the intellect.

Mr. James Joyce is a great man who is entirely without taste.

Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.