Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.

See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking.

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.