The American grips himself, at the very sources of his consciousness, in a grip of care: and then, to so much of the rest of life, is indifferent. Whereas, the European hasn't got so much care in him, so he cares much more for life and living.
That is almost the whole of Russian literature: the phenomenal coruscations of the souls of quite commonplace people.
The true artist doesn't substitute immorality for morality. On the contrary, he always substitutes a finer morality for a grosser one.
We have to hate our immediate predecessors to get free of their authority.
I prefer unlucky things. Luck is vulgar. Who wants what luck would bring? I don't.
Psychoanalysis is out, under a therapeutic disguise, to do away entirely with the moral faculty in man.
One can no longer live with people: it is too hideous and nauseating. Owners and owned, they are like the two sides of a ghastly disease.
Oh literature, oh the glorious Art, how it preys upon the marrow in our bones. It scoops the stuffing out of us, and chucks us aside. Alas!
Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.
The Christian fear of the pagan outlook has damaged the whole consciousness of man.
Consciousness is an end in itself. We torture ourselves getting somewhere, and when we get there it is nowhere, for there is nowhere to get to.
If a woman hasn't got a tiny streak of harlot in her, she's a dry stick as a rule.
Do not allow to slip away from you freedoms the people who came before you won with such hard knocks.
There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master.
There's always the hyena of morality at the garden gate, and the real wolf at the end of the street.
Loud peace propaganda makes war seem imminent.
Having achieved and accomplished love... man... has become himself, his tale is told.
Europe's the mayonnaise, but America supplies the good old lobster.
Literature is a toil and a snare, a curse that bites deep.
[Hawthorne''s] pious blame is a chuckle of praise all the while.
If a novel reveals true and vivid relationships, it is a moral work, no matter what the relationships consist in. If the novelisthonours the relationship in itself, it will be a great novel.
I hate England and its hopelessness. I hate [Arnold] Bennett's resignation. Tragedy ought really to be a great big kick at misery.
The weakness of modern tragedy[is that] transgression against the social code is made to bring destruction, as though the social code worked our irrevocable fate.
Do come back and draw the ferrets, they are the most lovely noble darlings in the world.
Death is the only pure, beautiful conclusion of a great passion.
Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.
Money is our madness, our vast collective madness.