“This is why we get infinitely more pleasure imagining combinations of the sounds of trolleys, autos and other vehicles, and loud crowds, than listening once more, for instance, to the heroic or pastoral symphonies.”

“Thought is the greatest of pleasures —pleasure itself is only imagination—have you ever enjoyed anything more than your dreams?”

“The idea that beauty is revolution is a revelation to me. I once believed that the concept of the music was more important than the sound, that the politics of the notation was more important than the time limits of the rehersals and therefore, more important than the sound of the performance”

“Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd.”

“4. You hear his voice in a crowd more than any other.”

“Why do we have such a finite capacity for pleasure but an infinite one for pain?”

“Yes, I do enjoy walking at night. The world’s more to my liking then, not so loud, not so fast, not so crowded, and a good deal more mysterious.”

“There's only one thing more boring than listening to other people's dreams, and that's listening to their problems.”

“Others may know pleasure, but pleasure is not happiness. It has no more importance than a shadow following a man.”

“It is hard to understand why an attempt to get more of the national product for those who at present get least is to be dismissed as pandering to envy, while an attempt to tilt it the other way by securing more concessions for the discontented Conservative electors of Tonbridge is not denounced as rapacity, and why the one is manifestly more worthy than the other.”