To be nothing - is that not, after all, the most satisfactory fact in the whole world?

A veil of insanity everywhere: Oh why I was born in this age? It is a terrible age.

If the best of one's feelings means nothing to the person most concerned in those feelings, what reality is left us?

if newspapers were written by people whose sole object in writing was to tell the truth about politics and the truth about art we should not believe in war, and we should believe in art.

Chastity ... has, even now, a religious importance in a woman's life, and has so wrapped itself round with nerves and instincts that to cut it free and bring it to the light of day demands courage of the rarest.

If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now that in the time of the Pharaohs?

The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.