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

How few writers can prostitute all their powers!

In time, Mr Hall, one gets to recognize that sneer, that hardness, for fornication extends far beyond the actual deed. Were it a deed only, I for one would not hold it anathema. But when the nations went a whoring they invariably ended by denying God, I think, and until all sexual irregularities and not some of them are penal the Church will never reconquer England.

Aziz winked at him slowly and said: “...There are many ways of being a man; mine is to express what is deepest in my heart.

English literature is a flying fish.

Ulysses ... is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud, an inverted Victorianism, an attempt to make crossness and dirt succeed where sweetness and light failed, a simplification of the human character in the interests of Hell.

We are all like Scheherazade's husband, in that we want to know what happens next.