Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.

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

Human beings are, necessarily, actors who...can be divided...into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.

Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!

The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.

Christ did not enchant men; He demanded that they believe in Him: except on one occasion, the Transfiguration. For a brief while, Peter, James, and John were permitted to see Him in His glory. For that brief while they had no need of faith. The vision vanished, and the memory of it did not prevent them from all forsaking Him when He was arrested, or Peter from denying that he had ever known Him.

The true men of action in our time those who transform the world are not the politicians and statesmen but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are therefore speechless. When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.