Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice. - Cyril Connolly

He reduced everything to politics; he was also unalterably of the Left. His line may have been unpopular or unfashionable, but he followed it unhesitatingly; in fact it was an obsession. He could not blow his nose without moralising on conditions in the handkerchief industry.

If our elaborate and dominating bodies are given to us to be denied at every turn, if our nature is always wrong and wicked, how ineffectual we are — like fishes not meant to swim.

So wrote Pater, calling an art-for-art's sake muezzin to the faithful from the topmost turret of the ivory tower.