The hunger of the spirit for eternity - as fierce as a starving man's for bread - is much less a craving to go on living than a craving for redemption. Oh, and a protest against absurdity.

Speaking the truth, once you have started it, is too exhilarating to draw back.

An animal is not cruel; it lives wholly in the instant leap on its prey, in the present taste of marrow or blood. Cruelty begins with the memory, and the pleasures of the memory are impure; they draw their strength along levels where no sun has reached.

The critic's hankering to be law-giver rather than servant of literature is irrepressible.

There is a stage in any misery when the victim begins to find a deep satisfaction in it.

A politician is forced to make a habit of noble phrases and optimistic lies. In the end they infect himself.

Any marriage worth the name is no better than a series of beginnings - many of them abortive.