Quote collection
213 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"... there has never been a period in history when there have been necessary killings which has not been instantly followed by a period when there have been unnecessary killings."
"Here lies the real terror in the international war of ideologies; that a city knows not whom it entertains."
"It's my profession to bring people from various outlying districts of the mind to the normal. There seems to be a general feeling it's the place where they ought to be. Sometimes I don't see the urgency myself."
"The delight we find in art amounts to recognition of a saving grace, to an acknowledgment that the problem of life has a solution implicit in its own nature, though not yet formulated by the intellect."
"... it is nearly impossible to understand those who are beyond our sight, who are not explained to us by ties of birth or the contact of the flesh."
"Most magazines have that look of being predestined to be left which one sees on the faces of the women whose troubles bring them to the Law Courts."
"Like all bad drivers, he [Henry Andrews] thought he was the best driver in the world..."
"[Evelyn Waugh] made drunkenness cute and chic, and then took to religion, simply to have the most expensive carpet of all to be sick on."
"In these pages your imaginations, your desires, your passions are given life; Thoughts take shape that turn into dreams and our aspirations all start with a dream. Reading is where those dreams really can come true over and over again."
"I believe if people are looking for the truth, the truth of the Christian religion will come out and meet them."
"Anthologies are mischievous things. Some years ago there was a rage for chemically predigested food, which was only suppressed when doctors pointed out that since human beings had been given teeth and digestive organs they had to be used or they degenerated very rapidly. Anthologies are predigested food for the brain."
"The case against religion is the responsibility of God for the sufferings of mankind, which makes it impossible to believe the good things said about Him in the Bible, and consequently to believe anything it says about Him."
"The Portrait of a Lady is entirely successful in giving one the sense of having met somebody far too radiantly good for this world."
"If there is a God, I don't think He would demand that anyone bow down or stand up to Him. I often have a suspicion that God is still trying to work things out and hasn't finished."
"Reason's a thing we dimly see in sleep."
"music is a missionary effort to colonize earth for imperialistic heaven."
"Of Virginia Woolf: The talent of this generation which is most certain of survival."
"Neurotics, who cause less distress to themselves and their neighbours than those in the other category, are at war with their own natures. Their right hands are in conflict with their left. Psychotics, and it is those who commit purposeless crimes and prefer death to life, are at war with their environment. Right and left hands strike against the womb that carries them."
"The aged are terrible - mere heaps of cinders on the grass from which none can tell how tall the flames once were or what company gathered round them."
"Embraces do not matter; they merely indicate the will to love and may as well be followed by defeat as victory. But disregard means that now there needs to be no straining of the eyes, no stretching forth of the hands, no pressing of the lips, because theirs is such a union that they are no longer aware of the division of their flesh."