War, for any cause, is inexcusable. There is nothing which excuses us for the beastly ingenuity of our wars. Only fools, only the diseased, think that we are served by killing the strong young men with machines.

Is it really beyond our wits to devise some form of censorship which would trap only the crudely sadistic?

Lord, if there is a heartache Vienna cannot cure I hope never to feel it. I came home cured of everything except Vienna.

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

In Europe, war is a disease which has been in the family for generations: no one is surprised when it makes another leap. Even the patient only attends to it with part of his mind.

giving the utmost of herself to three absorbing interests [marriage, motherhood, career] ... was a problem for a superwoman, and a job for a superwoman, and only some such fabled being could have accomplished it with success.

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.