I cannot see that art is anything less than a way of making joys perpetual.

All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.

International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge.

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

Mozart eliminates the idea of haste from life. His airs could not lag as they make their journey through the listener's attention; they are not the right shape for loitering. But it is as true that they never rush, they are never headlong or helter-skelter, they splash no mud, they raise no dust.

To make laws is a human instinct that arises as soon as food and shelter have been ensured, among all peoples, everywhere.

It is a great pity that every human being does not, at an early stage of his life, have to write a historical work. He would then realize that the human race is in quite a jam about truth.