Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
The books that influence the world are those that it has not read.
All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.
Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.
A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.
Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know...
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
The whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it.
Half a truth is better than no politics.
You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.
The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.
The only defensible war is a war of defense.
If we are bound to improve, we need not trouble to improve. The pure doctrine of progress is the best of all reasons for not being a progressive.
The simplification of anything is always sensational.
Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.
A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason
Good literature may tell us the mind of one man; but bad literature may tell us the mind of many men.
If a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small.
There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.
