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

sentences were used by man before words and still come with the readiness of instinct to his lips. They, and not words, are the foundations of all language. ... Your cat has no words, but it has considerable feeling for the architecture of the sentence in relation to the problem of expressing climax.

I do not think women understand how repelled a man feels when he sees a woman wholly absorbed in what she is thinking, unless it is about her child, or her husband, or her lover. It ... gives one gooseflesh.

There is nothing rarer than a man who can be trusted never to throw away happiness, however eagerly he sometimes grasps it. In history we are as frequently interested in our own doom.

Where there is real love one wants to go to church first.

Existence in itself, taken at its least miraculous, is a miracle.

A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample.