The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.

Do you suppose there's any difference between spring in nature and spring in man? But there we go, praising the one and condemning the other as improper, ashamed that the same laws work eternally through both.

I really don't know what happens next -- one so seldom does.

My law-givers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul.

Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.

Some reviews give pain. This is regrettable, but no author has the right to whine. He was not obliged to be an author. He invited publicity, and he must take the publicity that comes along.

It is the function of the novelist to reveal the hidden life at its source: to tell us more about Queen Victoria than could be known, and thus to produce a character who is not the Queen Victoria of history.