Of course he despised the world as a whole; every thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refinement.

He lived to near the things he loved to seem poetical.

… and someone he scarcely knew moved towards him and knelt beside him and whispered, ‘Sir, was you calling out for me? … Sir, I know … I know,’ and touched him.

After all, is not a real Hell better than a manufactured Heaven?

My father says that there is only one perfect view — the view of the sky straight over our heads, and that all these views on earth are but bungled copies of it.

As her time in Florence drew to a close she was only at ease amongst those to whom she felt indifferent.

Too late… everything’s always too late.

Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off, but opening out.

Science explained people, but could not understand them.

Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.

When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.

Why can’t we be friends now?” said the other, holding him affectionately. “It’s what I want. It’s what you want.” But the horses didn’t want it — they swerved apart: the earth didn’t want it,...

Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.

Ladies sheltering behind men, men sheltering behind servants – the whole system’s wrong, and she must challenge it.

When we were only acquaintances, you let me be myself, but now you’re always protecting me… I won’t be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an...

He built up a situation that was far enough from the truth. It never occurred to him that Helen was to blame. He forgot the intensity of their talk, the charm that had been lent...

This desire to govern a woman — it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together…. But I do love you surely in a better way then he does.” He thought. “Yes...

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. The commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean...

Italy and London are the only places where I don’t feel to exist on sufferance.

Had he lived some centuries ago, in the brightly coloured civilizations of the past, he would have had a definite status, his rank and his income would have corresponded. But in his day the angel...

The historian records, but the novelist creates.

All a child’s life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. Destroy that and everything goes – morals, behavior, everything. Absolute trust in someone else is the essence of education.

He was not sure, but liked it. It recurred when they met suddenly or had been silent. It beckoned to him across intellect, saying, “This is all very well, you’re clever, we know—but come!” It...

She had come to that state where the horror of the universe and its smallness are both visible at the same time—the twilight of the double vision in which so many elderly people are involved....

If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

He had a theory that musicians are incredibly complex, and know far less than other artists what they want and what they are; that they puzzle themselves as well as their friends; that their psychology...

You talk as if a god had made the Machine,” cried the other. “I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men....

I swear from the bottom of my heart I want to be healed. I want to be like other men, not this outcast whom nobody wants.

Disdaining the heroic outfit, excitable in her methods, garrulous, episodical, shrill, she misled her lover much as she misled her aunt. He mistook her fertility for weakness. He supposed her “as clever as they make...

So never give in,” continued the girl, and restated again and again the vague yet convincing plea that the Invisible lodges against the Visible. Her excitement grew as she tried to cut the rope that...

The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it...

In time, Mr Hall, one gets to recognize that sneer, that hardness, for fornication extends far beyond the actual deed. Were it a deed only, I for one would not hold it anathema. But when...

now. ” She did not free Leonard yet, and the knife plunged deeper into his heart as the train drew up at Hilton. But remorse had become beautiful.

We may still contrive to raise three cheers for democracy, although at present she only deserves two.

We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.

I’d far rather leave a thought behind me than a child. Other people can have children.

There is only a certain amount of kindness in the world…just as there is a certain amount of light. We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from...

Nature pulls one way and human nature another.

Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don’t believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art...

He will work off his crudities in time. I rather mistrust young men who slip into life gracefully.

There is much that is immortal in this medieval lady. The dragons have gone, and so have the knights, but still she lingers in our midst. She reigned in many an early Victorian castle, and...

When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.

For the dead, who seem to take away so much, really take with them nothing that is ours.

I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England’s.

Why children?’ he asked. ‘Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it.

There was a great scene over some violets. They picked violets and filled all the vases in the room of these very Miss Alans who have failed to come to Cissie Villa. Poor little ladies!...

Boys are marvellous creatures. Perhaps they will sink below the brutes; perhaps they will attain to a woman’s tenderness.