That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent.
So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.
What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.
The impulse to cruelty is, in many people, almost as violent as the impulse to sexual love - almost as violent and much more mischievous.
There isn't any formula or method. You learn to love by loving - by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.
You should hurry up and acquire the cigar habit. It's one of the major happinesses. And so much more lasting than love, so much less costly in emotional wear and tear.
It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'try to be a little kinder.'
Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.
Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.
Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.
De Sade is the one completely consistent and thoroughgoing revolutionary of history.
Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history.
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.
Happiness is a hard master, particularly other people's happiness.
There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.
What we feel and think and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless glands and viscera.
Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.
One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.
Like every man of sense and good feeling, I abominate work.
It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.