We must not stay as we are, doing always what was done last time, or we shall stick in the mud. Yet neither must we undertake a new world as catastrophic Utopians, and wreck our civilization in our hurry to mend it.

Marry Ann; and at the end of a week you'll find no more inspiration in her than in a plate of muffins.

Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.

It was from Handel that I learned that style consists in force of assertion.

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.

If women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.