Idiocy is the female defect ... It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy.

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

Economists are like Aeolian harps, and the sounds that issue from them are determined by the winds that blow.

Charity is an ugly trick. It is a virtue grown by the rich on the graves of the poor. Unless it is accompanied by sincere revolt against the present social system, it is a cheap moral swagger. In former times it was used as fire insurance by the rich, but now that the fear of Hell has gone along with the rest of revealed religion, it is used either to gild mean lives with nobility or as a political instrument.

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

Fiction and poetry are the only way one can stop time and give an account of an experience and nail it down so that it lasts for ever.

To those who fall and hurt themselves one runs with comfort; by those who lie dangerously stricken by a disease one sits and waits.