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

There is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.

The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.

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.

The crime of suicide lies rather in its disregard for the feelings of those whom we leave behind.

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. The commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without effort, whilst we look up, marvelling how he has escaped us, and thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but translate his visions into human words, and his experiences into human actions. Perhaps he cannot; certainly he does not, or does so very seldom.

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.