The Navy's a very gentlemanly business. You fire at the horizon to sink a ship and then you pull people out of the water and say, "Frightfully sorry, old chap." |
The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it. |
To be in a world which is a hell, to be of that world and neither to believe in or guess at anything but that world is not merely hell but the only possible damnation: the act of a man damning himself. It may be -- I hope it is -- redemption to guess and perhaps perceive that the universe, the hell which we see for all its beauty, vastness, majesty, is only part of a whole which is quite unimaginable. |
Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state. If they are to be treated as anything but trivial exercises of the imagination. I suggest there is a simple test we can apply. We must forget the whole paraphernalia of social description, demonstration, expostulation, approbation, condemnation. We have to say to ourselves, ''How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?'' |
What a man does defiles him, not what is done by others. |