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I don't much hold with the present vogue for printing people's opinion on anything and everything. The problem is they're encouraged to talk about things they know nothing about: the priest rants against the theatre, the actor criticizes the army, the murderer applauds amnesties and the minister laments the condition of the worker. It's impossible to escape the torrent of words....

Faced with the sad fact that life is a vale of tears, I have chosen to prey on the rich rather than lose my self-respect begging at their table. Society is a jungle where the strong devour the weakand the moral of the story is that we all end of six feet under.... I do nobody any harm, I simply cream off a tiny surplus.

I can see no wisdom or purpose in anything now but to get to one's journey's end as quickly and bravely as one can. And even then, even if we do call life a journey, and death the inn we shall reach at last in the evening when it's over; that, too, I feel will be only as brief a stopping-place as any other inn would be. Our experience here is so scanty and shallow—nothing more than the moment of the continual present

What are we human beings after all? Clay in the hands of the potter. Our bodies are merely an inheritance, packed tight and corded up. We have practically no control over their main functions. We can't even replace a little finger-nail. And look at the faces of us—what atrocious mockeries most of them are of any kind of image!

Swearest thou? Ungracious boy, henceforth ne'er look on me. Thou art violently carried away from grace. There is a devil haunts thee in the likeness of an old fat man. A tun of man is thy companion. Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humors, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloakbag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding

Beware your enemy, but beware your friend a hundred-fold. Because if your friend becomes your enemy he can hurt you all the more, because he knows the tunnels to your heart.

Srebrenica: "We were in the hospital and we heard the crackle of the loudspeaker and went to the window and there was [General] Morillon: 'You are now under the protection of the United Nations.' We just burst out laughing—it was so absurd with him standing there and all the people watching. Branko the interpreter could not keep a straight face. Up went the UN flag. 'This is it. We are in big shit.'"

The Belgrade press erupted, reporting a flood of refugees, 20,000-strong, pouring into Serbia and claimed that eleven Serbs had been killed, including an orthodox priest. Vecernje Novosti reported in a special edition on the front page that the priest had been killed; on page 2 it said the priest had been wounded; and on page 3 it carried a statement from him.

The lure of nationalism had always dangled before Serbian politicians.... Milosevic sensed early on that the promise of change was an elixir. When Milosevic offered resolute action, he won immense popular support.

What do we want? You know. I know. Nobody confesses. What we all want to be is something perpetually young and beautiful—young Joves—young Joves, Ponderevo"—his voice became loud, harsh and declamatory—"pursuing coy half-willing nymphs through everlasting forests."...

In that English countryside of my boyhood every human being had a "place." It belonged to you from your birth like the colour of your eyes, it was inextricably your destiny. Above you were your betters, below you were your inferiors, and there were even an unstable questionable few, cases so disputable that you might for the rough purposes of every day at least, regard them as your equals.

You must remember always to give, of everything you have. You must give foolishly even. You must be extravagant. You must give to all who come into your life. Then nothing and no one will have the power to cheat you of anything, for if you give to a thief, he cannot steal from you, and he himself is then no longer a thief.

Mozart is one of those composers who expresses something (in his most important works, at any rate) which one feels to be qualitatively valuable, as well as unaffected and having a certain purity and integrity. This thing he expresses in forms of the most amazing originality, beauty, and delicacy.

One of the chief drawbacks of being a great man is the fact that, during your life and for long centuries after it, you are doomed to be the prey of innumerable small men who dissect you, re-invent you, use you as propaganda, slobber over you, abuse you, take the credit of you, make money out of you.

My dear Commander, everything I am going to discuss with you please remain behind your Herkos Odonton. You know the expression? No? ... Then, if I may so so, your education was incomplete. It is from the classical Greek. It means literally the Hedge of the Teeth.

I said, 'Adeo in teneris consuescere multum est. As the twig is bent the tree inclines. Also Virgil.'

As a critic [Sara Coleridge] never, like her father, grazed paths of light; she was a fertilizer, not a creator, a burrowing, tunnelling reader, throwing up molehills as she read her way through Dante, Virgil, Aristophanes, Crashaw, Jane Austen, Crabbe, to emerge suddenly, unafraid, in the very face of Keats and Shelley. "Fain would mine eyes," she wrote, "discern the Future in the past."

[Edward Gibbon] faced death with an equanimity that speaks well for "the profane virtues of sincerity and moderation." And as he sank into a sleep that was probably eternal, he could remember with satisfaction the view across the plain to the stupendous mountains beyond; the white acacia that grew beside the study window, and the great work which, he was not wrong in thinking, will immortalize his name.

Zounds! on the contrary, let us speak about it; for it was agreed among us, once for all, that we should always hold together, though engaged on opposite sides.

"Ah!" thought the Gascon; "he looks displeased. Can it be with me? He meditates. Is it about sending me to the Bastile? All very fine, my lord, but at the first hint you give of such a thing I will strangle you and become Frondist."

"We shall be murdered there," said Aramis. "I hate the English—they are coarse, like every nation that swills beer."

"No," replied d'Artagnan; "I regret to see that we hitherto united are opposed to each other. Ah! nothing will ever go well with us hereafter."

[Athos] remembered that all the first part of his life had been embittered by a woman and he thought with alarm of the influence love might assume over so fine, and at the same time so vigorous an organization as that of [Vicomte] Raoul [de Bragelonne].

"I shall pass all my life," though d'Artagnan, "in seeking for a man who is really contented with his lot."

I suppose life, I suppose the world is a nightmare, but I can't escape from it and am still dreaming it, And I cannot reach salvation. It's shielded from us. Yet I do my best and I find my salvation to be the act of writing, of going in for writing in a rather hopeless way, What can I do? I'm over 80. I am blind. I am very often lonely.

All those things, the wrong women, the wrong actions, the wrong circumstances, all those are tools to the poet. A poet should think of all things as being given him, even misfortune. Misfortune, defeat, humiliation, failure, those ARE our tools, You don't suppose that when you are happy, you can produce anything. happiness is its own aim.

It was a hot night. Sand from the Mohave had blown across the city. Tiny brown grains of sand clung to my fingertips whenever I touched anything, and when I got back to my room I found the mechanism of my new typewriter glutted with sand. It was in my ears and in my hair. When I took off my clothes it fell like powder to the floor. It was even between the sheets of my bed.

In his mind, he went down the list of little jobs [his fellow conspirators] had managed to acquire. Not a good list—a place to go in the morning, a little money, not much more.... Hitler wasn't going to fall anytime soon, history was ripe with forty-year dictatorships....

A clerk led him to Room 10—a long table, a few chairs, a hissing steam radiator, a high window behind a grille. A powerful presence, in Room 10: the smell of cooked paint and stale cigarette smoke, but mostly the smell of sweat, like a gymnasium.

If God had made the world for humans we would have alcohol that made the head clearer instead of drowsy and the tongues of men more articulate instead of slurred For it is when a man has consumed alcohol that he has the most important things to say.