The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.
Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.
On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
This life we live nowadays. It's not life, it's stagnation death-in-life. Look at all these bloody houses and the meaningless people inside them. Sometimes I think we're all corpses. Just rotting upright.