Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action.
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.
Carelessness is not fatal to journalism nor are cliches for the eye rests lightly on them. But what is intended to be read once can seldom be read more than once a journalist has to accept the fact...
A writer who takes up journalism abandons the slow tempo of literature for a faster one and the change will do him harm. By degrees the flippancy of journalism will become a habit and the pleasure of...
Youth is a period of missed opportunities.
All charming people have something to conceal usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.
The secret of happiness ... is to be in harmony with existence to be always calm always lucid always willing "to be joined to the universe without being more conscious of it than an idiot " to let...
Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.
Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self.
The dread of lonliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.
The man who is master of his passions is Reason's slave.
We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion if we want to be happy.
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice.
There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it...
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." - "Meglio scrivere per se stessi e non avere un pubblico piuttosto che scrivere per gli altri e non ess...
A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion for the instinctual tribes must be satisfied.
Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those that do.
The friendships which last are those wherein each friend respects the other's dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from him.