The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim read more

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.

The true function of art is to...edit nature and so make it coherent and lovely. The artist is a sort read more

The true function of art is to...edit nature and so make it coherent and lovely. The artist is a sort of impassioned proofreader, blue-penciling the bad spelling of God.

The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost two genera- a small minority that read more

The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost two genera- a small minority that plays with ideas and is capable of taking them in, and a vast majority that finds them painful, and is thus arrayed against them, and against all who have traffic with them. The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority, and to the minority only. The majority has no more to do with it than it has to do with ecclesiastic politics on Mars. In so far as that heritage is apprehended, it is viewed with enmity. But in the main it is not apprehended at all.

Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era read more

Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era of events. The new barbarism of the twentieth century is the echo of words bandied about by brilliant speakers and writers in the second half of the nineteenth.

Men have made an idol of luck as an excuse for their own thoughtlessness.

Men have made an idol of luck as an excuse for their own thoughtlessness.

Throw moderation to the winds, and the greatest pleasures bring the greatest pains.

Throw moderation to the winds, and the greatest pleasures bring the greatest pains.

The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.

The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.

There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.

There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.

To take an unequivocal stand, it seems to me, is of greater heuristic value and far more likely to stimulate read more

To take an unequivocal stand, it seems to me, is of greater heuristic value and far more likely to stimulate constructive criticism than to evade the issue.