Morality in the novel is the trembling instability of the balance. When the novelist puts his thumb in the scale, to pull down the balance to his own predilection, that is immorality.

Shall I tell you what you have that other men don't?.... It's the courage of your own tenderness.

[Man's] life consists in a relation with all things: stone, earth, trees, flowers, water, insects, fishes, birds, creatures, sun,rainbow, children, women, other men. But his greatest and final relation is with the sun.

Money poisons you when you've got it, and starves you when you haven't.

And what's romance? Usually, a nice little tale where you have everything As You Like It, where rain never wets your jacket and gnats never bite your nose and it's always daisy-time.

I cannot be a materialist - but Oh, how is it possible that a God who speaks to all hearts can let Belgravia go laughing to a vicious luxury, and Whitechapel cursing to a filthy debauchery - such suffering, such dreadful suffering - and shall the short years of Christ's mission atone for it all?

I do esteem individual liberty above everything.