A nation has honor precisely as it has fleas - on this or that body. The statesman who talks of honor - unless he means something else, quite different - is a rogue.

Nothing lasts. Not even a great sorrow.

From so much of this seriously-intended pornography there rises, even when it is lewdly or boisterously comic, the acrid smell, unmistakable, of self-dislike.

Critics have been amusing themselves for a long time by auscultating fiction for signs of heart failure.

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

Hope is a talent like any other.

Mere human beings cant afford to be fanatical about anything. Not even about justice or loyalty. The fanatic for justice ends by murdering a million helpless people to clear a space for his law-courts. If we are to survive on this planet, there must be compromises.