Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.

God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.

Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.

We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.

Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.

Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.

Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.