In what touches their social convictions, most persons do not think. The threat of change, with all it suggests to them in the loss of social and economic privilege, alarms so deeply that they are incapable of unprejudiced thought. They seem to themselves to be thinking, with lucidity and fairness, but since they start from the conviction that change must undoubtedly be for the worse or from settled grief at the thought of losing what is old and lovely, they are doing no more than following a logical sequence of ideas from a false premise.

jealousy, the most hideous emotion any human being ever suffers, has nothing to do with the mind. Or not at first.

Not literature alone, but society itself is wormed and rotten when language ceases to be respected not merely by advertisers and politicians, but by persons of learning and authority.

In France, even heresy rapidly hardens into dogma.

There is as much vanity in self-scourgings as in self-justification.

If we are to survive on this planet, there must be compromises.

One of the uncovenanted benefits of living for a long time is that, having so many more dead than living friends, death can appear as a step backwards into the joyous past.