I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there.

Adventures do occur, but not punctually.

One doesn't come to Italy for niceness," was the retort; "one comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno!

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.

One marvels why the middle classes still insist on so much discomfort for their children at such expense to themselves.

All that is observable in a man-that is to say his actions and such of his spiritual existence as can be deduced from his actions-falls into the domain of history.

All a child's life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. Destroy that and everything goes — morals, behaviour, everything. Absolute trust in some one else is the essence of education.