Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it.

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.

I'd far rather leave a thought behind me than a child. Other people can have children.

One grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood.

Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out.

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.

Science explained people, but could not understand them. After long centuries among the bones and muscles it might be advancing to knowledge of the nerves, but this would never give understanding