To make a precise scientific description of reality out of words is like trying to build a rigid structure out of pure quicksilver.

It is as dangerous for people unaccustomed to handling words and unacquainted with their technique to tinker about with these heavily-charged nuclei of emotional power as it would be for me to burst into a laboratory and play about with a powerful electromagnet or other machine highly charged with electrical force.

In fact, there is perhaps only one human being in a thousand who is passionately interested in his job for the job's sake. The difference is that if that one person in a thousand is a man, we say, simply, that he is passionately keen on his job; if she is a woman, we say she is a freak.

Well-bred English people never have imagination.

The business of the artist is not to escape from his material medium or bully it, but to serve it; but to serve it, he must love it. If he does so, he will realise that in its service is perfect freedom.

[Did you] ever know a sincere emotion to express itself in a subordinate clause?

It is the first duty of a gentleman to remember in the morning who he went to bed with the night before.