To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.

I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.

At the side of the everlasting why, is a yes, and a yes, and a yes.

Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.

Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.

I'm a holy man minus the holiness.

If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

Liking one person is an extra reason for liking another.

Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.

Two cheers for Democracy; one because it admits variety, and two because it permits criticism.

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.

Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land.

The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.

For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.

Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality both of the writer and of the recipient.

No man can be an agnostic who has a sense of humour.

One of the evils of money is that it tempts us to look at it rather than at the things that it buys.