English literature is a flying fish.

George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her. Before she could speak, almost before she could feel, a voice called 'Lucy! Lucy! Lucy!' The silence of life had been broken by Miss Bartlett, who stood brown against the view.

...the true spirit of gastronomic joylessness. Porridge fills the Englishman up, and prunes clear him out.

Paganism is infectious, more infectious than diphtheria or piety.

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

Growing old is an emotion which comes over us at almost any age; I had it myself between the ages of 25 and 30.

It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.