What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.
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 distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.
It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness.
We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.
Be soft, even if you stand to get squashed.