Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.
He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him).
Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.
A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.
It is one of the tragedies of the half-educated that they develop late, when they are already committed to some wrong way of life.
