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Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.

— Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartet (1957)

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More quotes by Lawrence Durrell

Man is only an extension of the spirit of place.

History is an endless repetition of the wrong way of living.

The Listener (1978)

It's only with great vulgarity that you can achieve real refinement, only out of bawdry that you can get tenderness.

A woman's best love letters are always written to the man she is betraying.

The Alexandria Quartet (1957)

Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will—whatever we may think.

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Each of these private teachers who work for pay ... inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom.

Socrates

Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.

Wilhelm Reich Philosophy : An Introduction to the Art of Wondering (2005)

Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël De l’Allemagne [Germany (1813)

Like every 'intellectual', a philosophy teacher is a petty bourgeois. When he opens his mouth, it is petty-bourgeois ideology that speaks: its resources and ruses are infinite.

Louis Althusser Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Lawrence Durrell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.