In the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship.
Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content: the quiet mind is richer than a crown.
The hands of the guilty don’t necessarily tremble; only in stories does a dropped glass betray agitation. Tension is more often shown in the studied action.
A single feat of daring can alter the whole conception of what is possible.
To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honor – the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two.
A man kept his character even when he was insane.
I could never have been a pacifist. To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasurable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity.
So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one’s days.
One can’t love humanity. One can only love people.
Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.
My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.
We can love with our minds, but can we love only with our minds? Love extends itself all the time, so that we can love even with our senseless nails: we love even with our clothes, so that a sleeve can feel a sleeve.
I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can’t love and do nothing.
Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.
Oh, I’m not a Berkeleian. I believe my back’s against this wall. I believe there’s a sten gun over there.
It was like having a box of chocolates shut in the bedroom drawer. Until the box was empty it occupied the mind too much.
Lust is not the worst thing. It is because any day, any time, lust may turn into love that we have to avoid it. And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.
I measured love by the extent of my jealousy.
Thought’s a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?
People talk about the courage of condemned men walking to the place of execution: sometimes it needs as much courage to walk with any kind of bearing towards another person’s habitual misery.