Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think, creation's.

It makes a difference doesn't it, whether we fully fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?

For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.

There are moments when the inner life actually 'pays,' when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.

In time, Mr Hall, one gets to recognize that sneer, that hardness, for fornication extends far beyond the actual deed. Were it a deed only, I for one would not hold it anathema. But when the nations went a whoring they invariably ended by denying God, I think, and until all sexual irregularities and not some of them are penal the Church will never reconquer England.

But after all, what have we to do with taverns? Real menace belongs to the drawing-room.

Ideas are fatal to caste.