Charm, in most men and nearly all women, is a decoration.
One is certain of nothing but the truth of one's own emotions.
One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.
The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.
The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch.
A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.
One of the evils of money is that it tempts us to look at it rather than at the things that it buys.
I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.
Love is always being given where it is not required.
We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.
What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?
Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.
We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.
I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual.
Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.
The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.