One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

My children weary me. I can only see them as defective adults: feckless, destructive, frivolous, sensual, humorless.

If one's object is ascetic, it is far better to stay in London or Paris or New York; there is practically no extreme of heat or cold, physical risk, loneliness, hunger or thirst that cannot, with a little ingenuity, be conveniently achieved in the centres of civilization.

I know very few young people, but it seems to me that they are all possessed with an almost fatal hunger for permanence.

Wine is a bride who brings a great dowry to the man who woos her persistently and gracefully.

Every Englishman abroad, until it is proved to the contrary, likes to consider himself a traveller and not a tourist.

No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can't really hate God either. When they want to Hate Him and His saints they have to find something like themselves and pretends it's God and hate that.