Man seems not so much wicked as frail, unable to face pain, trouble and growing old. A good woman knows that nature is her enemy. Look at what it does to her.

People hear what they want and expect to hear, not what is said.

Novelists... fashioning nets to sustain and support the reader as he falls helplessly through the chaos of his own existence.

The desire for self-expression afflicts people when they feel there is something of themselves which is not getting through to the outside world.

To the happy all things come: happiness can even bring the dead back to life. It is our resentments, our dreariness, our hate and envy, unrecognized by us, which keeps us miserable. Yet these things are in our heads, not out of our hands; we own them. We can throw them out if we choose.

Ambition will, and should, always outstrip achievement.

People fail you, children disappoint you, thieves break in, moths corrupt, but an Order of the British Empire goes on for ever.