Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.

The proper, wise balancing of one's whole life may depend upon the feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.

The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows exactly where one is.

Prepare to live by all means, but for Heaven's sake do not forget to live.

The man who begins to go to bed forty minutes before he opens his bedroom door is bored; that is to say, he is not living.

No mind, however loving, could bear to see plainly into all the recess of another mind.

Of all the inhabitants of the inferno, none but Lucifer knows that hell is hell, and the secret function of purgatory is to make of heaven an effective reality.