There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy.

The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.

It is not that the Englishman can't feel-it is that he is afraid to feel. He has been taught at his public school that feeling is bad form. He must not express great joy or sorrow, or even open his mouth too wide when he talks-his pipe might fall out if he did.

Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible. I dislike the stuff. I do not believe in it, for its own sake, at all... My lawgivers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul. My temple stands not upon Mount Moriah but in the Elysian Field where even the immoral are admitted. My motto is 'Lord, I disbelieve - help thou my unbelief.

The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.

Liking one person is an extra reason for liking another.