I don't trust sentimentality in men; it goes with tyranny; you can't have one without the other.

Love can bear anything better than ridicule.

But there is that about well-intentioned advice that has the opposite effect of the one intended, and causes a Spanish fly of perversity to enter into the hitherto passive soul.

My bitterness is not an abstract substance, it is as solid as a Christmas cake; I can cut it in slices and hand it round and there is still plenty left, for tomorrow.

Virtue in a man doesn't make you want to grab him.

There is, happily, no limit to the faith of human nature in believing what it wants to believe.

England, where nobody ever says what they mean: and by denying feeling, kill it off stone-cold at the roots.