The Expulsion from Eden is an act of vindictive womanish spite; the Fall of Man, as recounted in the Bible, comes nearer to the Fall of God.

A writer is in danger of allowing his talent to dull who lets more than a year go past without finding himself in his rightful place of composition, the small single unluxurious retreat of the twentieth century, the hotel bedroom.

Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.

Were I to deduce any system from my feelings on leaving Eton, it might be called The Theory of Permanent Adolescence. It is the theory that the experiences undergone by boys at the great public schools, their glories and disappointments, are so intense as to dominate their lives and to arrest their development. From these it results that the greater part of the ruling class remains adolescent, school-minded, self-conscious, cowardly, sentimental, and in the last analysis homosexual.

The shock, for an intelligent writer, of discovering for the first time that there are people younger than himself who think him stupid is severe.

We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.

Green leaves on a dead tree is our epitaph-green leaves, dear reader, on a dead tree.