Time, which runs through the world like an endless tinsel thread, seemed to pass through the centre of this room and through the centre of these people and suddenly to pause and petrify, stiff, still and glittering... and the objects in the room drew a little closer together.

... there is a particular propensity in the world for people, wherever they appear in great numbers, to permit themselves collectively everything that would be forbidden them individually.

Life is to blame for everything.

... all professional ideologies are high-minded. Hunters, for instance, would not dream of calling themselves the butchers of the woods.

Ideology is: intellectual ordering of the feelings; an objective connection among them that makes the subjective connection easier.

All still lifes are actually paintings of the world on the sixth day of creation, when God and the world were alone together, without man!

[...] a number of flawed individuals can often add up to a brilliant social unit.