England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.

But after all, what have we to do with taverns? Real menace belongs to the drawing-room.

When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else.

I'm a holy man minus the holiness. Hand that on to your three spies, and tell them to put it in their pipes.

The bully and his victim never quite forget their first relations.

Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it.

Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.