The last sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost - to lie to oneself. Lying to other people - that's a small thing in comparison.

It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.

How far does one combine resistance to over-control with social justice, i.e. tolerable living for people in general? We are too selfish to be trusted, if left free, to give away enough to make people comfortable enough to give them a chance. Yet if all this is ordered for us, as to some extent it has to be, it so soon leads to tyranny. It is a very difficult problem. If only human beings had more pity, unselfishness, and justice and didn't need coercion to treat each other decently.

Each wrong act brings with it its own anesthetic, dulling the conscience and blinding it against further light, and sometimes for years.

Never approach a friend's wife or girlfriend with mischief as your goal... unless she's really attractive.

To be prejudiced is the privilege of the thinking human being. ... The open mind is the empty mind.

Nothing, perhaps, is strange, once you have accepted life itself, the great strange business which includes all lesser strangeness.