The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.

What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?

Beneath a mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom. I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivolous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound; each day, vacuous and habit-ridden, I help it re-form.

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.

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

He [George Orwell] would not blow his nose without moralising on conditions in the handkerchief industry.

In my religion, there would be no exclusive doctrine; all would be love, poetry, and doubt.