Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality both of the writer and of the recipient.

I hated the idleness, the stupidity, the respectability, the petty unselfishness.

By the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes--a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.

I distrust Great Men... I believe in aristocracy, though... Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet... They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.

The Germans are called brutal, the Spanish cruel, the Americans superficial, and so on; but we are perfide Albion, the island of hypocrites, the people who have built up an Empire with a Bible in one hand, a pistol in the other, and financial concessions in both pockets. Is the charge true? I think it is.

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.

I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.