You confuse what's important with what's impressive.

Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible. I dislike the stuff. I do not believe in it, for its own sake, at all... My lawgivers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul. My temple stands not upon Mount Moriah but in the Elysian Field where even the immoral are admitted. My motto is 'Lord, I disbelieve - help thou my unbelief.

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.

I am actually what my age and my upbringing have made me - a bourgeois who adheres to the British constitution, adheres to it rather than supports it, and the fact that this isn't dignified doesn't worry me.

Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull.

Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.

Excuse my mistakes, realize my limitations. Life is not easy as we know it on the earth.