“You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art.”

“‎"But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.”

“And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue — liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.”

“That was the chief difference between literature and life. In books, the proportion of exceptional to commonplace people is high; in reality, very low.”

“Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?”

“It isn’t only art that is incompatible with happiness, it’s also science. Science is dangerous, we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.”

“There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.”