You can have all ego, or all non-ego, but in theory you cannot have half one and half the other — yet in practice this is exactly what you must have,… - Samuel Butler

To me it seems that those who are happy in this world are better and more lovable people than those who are not.

Morality turns on whether the pleasure precedes or follows the pain. Thus, it is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first, and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk.

The greatest poets never write poetry. The Homers and Shakespeares are not the greatest — they are only the greatest that we can know. And so with Handel among musicians. For the highest poetry, whether in music or literature, is ineffable — it must be felt from one person to another, it cannot be articulated.