Language is one of the thin walls humanity has built up over centuries against its own bestial and destructive impulses.

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

to grow old is to have taken away, one by one, all gifts of life, the food and wine, the music and the company. ... the gods unloose, one by one, the mortal fingers that cling to the edge of the table.

a writer's first duty is to be clear. Clarity is an excellent virtue. Like all virtues it can be pursued at ruinous cost. Paid, so far as I am concerned, joyfully.

You can't argue with a raging want. You can, but it is useless.

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

Nationalism will keep its venom until we succeed in creating an image of the nations of the whole world as so many provinces.