 Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt. |
| A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera. |
| The great book for you is the book that has the most to say to you at the moment when you are reading. I do not mean the book that is most instructive, but the book that feeds your spirit. And that depends on your age, your experience, your psychological and spiritual need. |
| Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving. |
| The love of truth lies at the root of much humor. |
| Do not suppose, however, that I intend to urge a diet of classics on anybody. I have seen such diets at work. I have known people who have actually read all, or almost all, the guaranteed Hundred Best Books. God save us from reading nothing but the best. |
| The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring. |
| We wanted to meet him, for though we were neither of us naive people we had not wholly lost our belief that it is delightful to meet artists who have given us pleasure. |
| Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision. |
| The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual discussion: what is left is theater. |
| The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past. |
| I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them. |
| Literary critics, however, frequently suffer from a curious belief that every author longs to extend the boundaries of literary art, wants to explore new dimensions of the human spirit, and if he doesn't, he should be ashamed of himself. |
| Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it. |
| Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them. |
| Canada is not really a place where you are encouraged to have large spiritual adventures. |
