One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

I believe we shall come to care about people less and less, Helen. The more people one knows, the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London. I quite expect to end my life caring most for a place.

If only the sense of actuality can be lulled-and it sleeps for ever in most historians-there is no passion that cannot be gratified in the past.

When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.

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.

What the world most needs today are negative virtues - not minding people, not being huffy, touchy, irritable or revengeful.

For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.