The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define. |
The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves. |
The so-called white races are really pinko-grey |
The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. |
There is much good luck in the world, but it is luck. We are none of us safe. We are children, playing or quarrelling on the line. |
They go forth with well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds and undeveloped hearts. An undeveloped heart-not a cold one. The difference is important. |
Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think, creation's |
This opera is my Nunc Dimittis, in that it dismisses me peacefully and convinces me I have achieved. |
To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way. |
Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had a bad press. It is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things. |
Towns are excrescences, gray fluxions, where men, hurrying to find one another, have lost themselves. |
Ulysses . . . is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud. |
Unless we remember we cannot understand |
We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet. |
We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. |