In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner. A pattern is set up and soon becomes inflexible, of one person always ma...
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The notion that one will not survive a particular catastrophe is, in general terms, a comfort since it is equivalent to abolishing the catastrophe.
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A good man often appears gauche simply because he does not take advantage of the myriad mean little chances of making himself look stylish. Preferring truth to form, he is not constantly at work upon the faade of his appearance.
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The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.
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Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one's ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonizing preoccupation with self.
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The sin of pride may be a small or a great thing in someone's life, and hurt vanity a passing pinprick, or a self-destroying or ever murderous obsession.
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People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.
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Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.
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But fantasy kills imagination, pornography is death to art.
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Henry James created more convincing women than Iris Murdoch put together.
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One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance.
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Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference.
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A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.
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Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.
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He was a sociologist; he had got into an intellectual muddle early on in life and never managed to get out.
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Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.
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I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.
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One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.
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Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
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Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!
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All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.
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The priesthood is a marriage. People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that love must change into some other love which is so unlike it that it can hardly be recognized as love at all.
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Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.
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The cry of equality pulls everyone down.
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We can only learn to love by loving.
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Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
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Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.
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Falling out of love is very enlightening. For a short while you see the world with new eyes.
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I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same.
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