If a writer stops observing he is finished. But he does not have to observe consciously nor think how it will be useful. Perhaps that would be true at the beginning. But later everything he sees goes into the great reserve of things he knows or has seen.
Madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does.
If what passed as nonviolence does not enable people to protect the honour of women, or if it does not enable women to protect their own honour, it is not nonviolence.
The nature of Christ is, I grant it, from one end to another, a web of mysteries; but this mysteriousness does not correspond to the difficulties which all existence contains. Let it be rejected, and the whole world is an enigma; let it be accepted, and we possess a wonderful explanation of the history of man.
The Geneva Convention . . . says that there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It’s very vague. What does that mean, ‘outrages upon human dignity’?
The concept of "mental health" in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.
When self control is lacking in small things, the ability to apply it to matters of importance withers away. Every day in which one does not at least deny himself some trifle is badly spent and a threat to the day following.