I believe we shall come to care about people less and less, Helen. The more people one knows, the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London. I quite expect to end my life caring most for a place.

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.

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

It isn't possible to love and to part.

For you cannot have gentility without paying for it.

A critic has no right to the narrowness which is the frequent prerogative of the creative artist.

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