No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling, even if it be only the faintest shadow - and if it does not do so it is bad art and false morals.

This became Delacroix ’s theme: that the achievements of the spirit all that a great library contained were the result of a state of society so delicately balanced that at the least touch they would be crushed beneath an avalanche of pent-up animal forces.

I just don’t think the moon is going to be an adequate substitute for the fact that we haven’t addressed ourselves to clearing up the slums.

As I have said, it may be difficult to define civilization, but it isn’t so difficult to recognize barbarism.

I believe order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven’t changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must try to learn from history.

The moral and intellectual failure of Marxism has left us with no alternative to heroic materialism, and that isn’t enough.

Pride, like humility, is destroyed by one’s insistence that he possesses it.

One musn’t overrate the culture of what used to be called “top people” before the wars. They had charming manners, but they were as ignorant as swans.

Evidently one cannot look for long at the Last Supper without ceasing to study it as a composition, and beginning to speak of it as a drama. It is the most literary of all great pictures, one of the few of which the effect may largely be conveyed – can even be enhanced – by description.

A visual experience is vitalizing. Whereas to write great poetry, to draw continuously on one’s inner life, is not merely exhausting, it is to keep alight a consuming fire.