The trouble is. . .that everybody sneers at restrictions and demands freedom, till something annoying happens; then they demand angrily what has become of the discipline.

It's disquieting to reflect that one's dreams never symbolize one's real wishes, but always something Much Worse... If I really wanted to be passionately embraced by Peter, I should dream of dentists or gardening. I wonder what unspeakable depths of awfulness can only be expressed by the polite symbol of Peter's embraces?

Lawyers enjoy a little mystery, you know. Why, if everybody came forward and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth straight out, we should all retire to the workhouse.

the autobiography is at one and the same time a single element in the series of the writer's created works and an interpretation of the whole series.

I am better off with vegetables at the bottom of my garden than with all the fairies of the Midsummer Night's Dream.

While time lasts there will always be a future, and that future will hold both good and evil, since the world is made to that mingled pattern.

But that's men all over ... Poor dears, they can't help it. They haven't got logical minds.