People in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner as well as their outer life can be exposed.

Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.

There are occasions when I would rather feel like a fly than a spider.

It's miles worse for you than that; I'm in love with your gamekeeper.

School was the unhappiest time of my life and the worst trick it ever played on me was to pretend that it was the world in miniature. For it hindered me from discovering how lovely and delightful and kind the world can be, and how much of it is intelligible.

It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror--on thethings that I might have avoided.

Of course he despised the world as a whole; every thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refinement.