“A people that grows accustomed to sloppy writing is a people in the process of losing grip on its empire and on itself.”

The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.

This is no book. Whoever touches this touches a man.

Religion I have defined as “Another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art”.

The natural object is always the adequate symbol.

Democracy is now currently defined in Europe as a ‘country run by Jews,’

Literature is news that stays news.

The temple is holy because it is not for sale.

Come, let us pity those who are better off than we are. Come, my friend, and remember that the rich have butlers and no friends, And we have friends and no butlers.

I found after seventy years that I was not a lunatic but a moron, I should have been able to do better.

Technique is the test of sincerity.

Until you know who has lent what to whom, you know nothing whatever of politics, you know nothing whatever of history, you know nothing of international wrangles.

Use no word that under stress of emotion you could not actually say.

The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.

Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books forever.

Every great change is simple.

What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage.

When people throw stones at you, don’t throw them back. Collect them all and build an empire.

The Mirror Empire is the most original fantasy I’ve read in a long time.

Thus the Western Empire died.

For what fortress, what city, in the wide extent of the Roman empire, can hope to exist, secure and impregnable, if it is our pleasure that it should be erased from the earth?

In summer the empire of insects spreads.

Making it purer and emptier, more absolute and more exclusive – non-objective, non-representational, non-figurative, non-imagist, non-expressionist, non-subjective.

How often has not the parallel been drawn and the golden age of the Roman Empire, when the external brilliancy of life likewise dazzled the eye

When I marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, I felt my legs were praying.