Most of the beauty of women evaporates when they achieve domestic happiness at the price of their independence.

Two weeks before his death, a friend asked him half jokingly if he had discovered any meaning in life. "Yes," he replied, "there is a meaning; at least, for me, there is one thing that matters - to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people."

The books I haven't written are better than the books other people have.

There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.

Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.

When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.

In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other's affairs, who come out together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude.