[On Jane Austen:] To believe her limited in range because she was harmonious in method is as sensible as to imagine that when the Atlantic Ocean is as smooth as a mill-pond it shrinks to the size of a mill-pond.

All our Western thought is founded on this repulsive pretence that pain is the proper price of any good thing.

Bad art is maintained by the neurotic, who is deadly afraid of authentic art because it inspires him to go on living, and he is terrified of life.

You must always believe that life is as extraordinary as music says it is.

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

If the whole human race lay in one grave, the epitaph on its headstone might well be: 'It seemed like a good idea at the time.'

Once a secret society establishes itself within an open society, there is no end to the hideous mistrust it must cause.