There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.

domestic work is the most elementary form of labor. It is suitable for those with the intelligence of rabbits. All it requires is cleanlines, tidiness and quickness - not moral or intellectual qualities at all, but merely the outward and visible signs of health.

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

[The satirist] must fully possess, at least in the world of the imagination, the quality the lack of which he is deriding in others.

The word 'idiot' comes from a Greek root meaning private person. Idiocy is the female defect: intent on their private lives, women follow their fate through a darkness deep as that cast by malformed cells in the brain. It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy: men are so obsessed by public affairs that they see the world as by moonlight, which shows the outlines of every object but not the details indicative of their nature.

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

There is in every one of us an unending see-saw between the will to live and the will to die.