There's enough sorrow in the world, isn't there, without trying to invent it.

There was something better in life than this rub­bish, if only he could get to it—love—nobility—big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science could reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend. . .

Roger Fry is painting me. It is too like me at present, but he is confident he will be able to alter that. Post-Impressionism is at present confined to my lower lip... and to my chin.

Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an audience of shock-heads, gaping around the camp-fire, fatigued with contending against the mammoth or wooly-rhinoceros, and only kept awake by suspense. What would happen next? The novelist droned on, and as soon as the audience guessed what happened next, they either fell asleep or killed him.

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.

No one is more triumphant than the man who chooses a worthy subject and masters all its facts.

The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.