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.

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

An intelligent man or woman willing to make a career of reviewing fiction is hard to come by ... And the temporaries do the work cheaply. Moreover, continuity may be got at the expense of intellectual arthritis; a reviewer who has been at his grisly task for half a lifetime may stiffen into prejudices of every sort, and become too anchylosed to do better than turn his back to a new wave when it rushes down on him.

To reject censorship after studying the risks involved is very well. To reject it ex cathedra, in the tones of Calvin pronouncing a dogma, eyes and mind closed to the possible consequences, the even marginally possible, is to make things too comfortable for oneself.

Hope is a talent like any other.

Think of all the really successful men and women you know. Do you know a single one who didn't learn very young the trick of calling attention to himself in the right quarters?

Truth is the only good and the purest pity. ... Men lie for profit or for pity. All lies turn to poison, but a lie that is told for pity or shame breeds such a host of ills that no power on earth can compass their redemption.