"Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better."

"'Therefore' is a word the poet must not know."

"Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else."

"To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company."

"Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books - but it is terrible when one has to live it."

"Man is not logical and his intellectual history is a record of mental reserves and compromises. He hangs on to what he can in his old beliefs even when he is compelled to surrender their logical basis."

"History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools."

"Once you get into this great stream of history, you can't get out."