“I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man’s pleasure when they come a cropper.”

Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.

The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.

But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality.

Don’t begin with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have failed.

… there are shadows because there are hills.

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.

If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.

I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.

When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.

The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.

I can only do what’s easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can’t, and won’t, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who’s strong enough to boss me or whom I’m strong enough to boss.

Money pads the edges of things.

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.

The way to turn our economy around is not by making rich people poorer, it’s by making poor people richer.

If people around you aren’t going anywhere, if their dreams are no bigger than hanging out on the corner, or if they’re dragging you down, get rid of them.

Heaven lies around us in our infancy.

Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all around us, in the air. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it.

I’ve been around a while. I kinda know these things.

I think my whole identity is formed around not knowing where I’m from. It might even be that I find comfort in that confusion.

I was around when my father finished the last payment of his house.

If you look around, at times the value may seem to be little or nothing at all. Often after you have sweated and tried and things are not better for you, there comes a feeling deep down in the soul that you are not worth much.