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.

Life's very difficult and full of surprises. At all events, I've got as far as that. To be humble and kind, to go straight ahead, to love people rather than pity them, to remember the submerged - well, one can't do all these things at once, worse luck, because they're so contradictory. It's then that proportion comes in - to live by proportion. Don't begin with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have failed.

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

England still waits for the supreme moment of her literature--for the great poet who shall voice her, or, better still, for the thousand little poets whose voices shall pass into our common talk.

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.

An acquaintance had become a lover, might become a husband, but would retain all that she had noted in the acquaintance; and love must confirm an old relation rather than reveal a new one.