Others

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.

Ideas won’t keep. Something must be done about them.

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.

An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.

I always say, keep a diary and some day it’ll keep you.

I design plain truth for plain people.

‘Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole’ … ‘Yes,’ said the Managing Editor. ‘That must be good style.’

News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read. And it’s only news until he’s read it. After that it’s dead.

Up to a point, Lord Copper.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the colour purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

The composition of a tragedy requires testicles.

We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe only truth.

All styles are good except the boring kind.

[Men] use thought only to justify their injustices, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. Lucky is he who has been able to understand the causes of things.

Experto credite.

Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus

I cannot help it that my pictures do not sell. Nevertheless the time will come when people will see that they are worth more than the price of the paint.

The artist brings something into the world that didn’t exist before, and … he does it without destroying something else.

The artist brings something into the world that didn’t exist before, and … he does it without destroying something else.

Laughter … the most civilized music in the world.