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

Without doubt cats are intellectuals who have been, by some mysterious decree of Providence, deprived of the comfort of the word.

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

But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example.

I see the main problem of my life, and indeed anybody's life, as the balancing of competitive freedoms ... a sense of mutual obligations that have to be honored, and a legal system which can be trusted to step in when that sense fails.

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.

Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.