Of one thing alone I am very sure: it is a law of our nature that the memory of longing should survive the more fugitive memory of fulfillment.

nations decay from within more often than they surrender to outward assault.

One cannot lay a foundation by scattering stones, nor is a reputation for good work to be got by strewing volumes about the world.

I have written chiefly because, though I have often dreaded the necessity, I have found it more painful, in the end, not to write.

the great novels have marched with the years. They are the contemporaries of time.

Some women enjoy unhappy love affairs, you know, though I have always felt that they are greatly overrated.

Youth is always an enemy to the old.