The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.

Charm, in most men and nearly all women, is a decoration.

When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.

If only the sense of actuality can be lulled-and it sleeps for ever in most historians-there is no passion that cannot be gratified in the past.

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden. It is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.

Belfastas uncivilised as ever--savage black mothers in houses of dark red brick, friendly manufacturers too drunk to entertain you when you arrive. It amuses me till I get tired.

At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.