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

The langour of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this come and go with us through life...These things are a part of life itself; but languor - the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse - that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.

I've always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. ... Or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, He won't quite despair of me in the end.

We can trace almost all the disasters of English history to the influence of Wales.

It is no longer possible to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it is based.

An artist must be a reactionary

Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher