I only wish the poets would say this too: love is of the body; not the body, but of the the body. Ah! the misery that would be saved if we confessed that! Ah! for a little directness to liberate the soul!

Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership.

The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme.

Adventures do occur, but not punctually.

The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.

Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.

Those who search for truth are too conscious of the maze to be hard on others...