No severity of punishment deters when detection is uncertain, as it always must be.

That older and greater church to which I belong: the church where the oftener you laugh the better, because by laughter only can you destroy evil without malice

To a professional critic (I have been one myself) theatre-going is the curse of Adam. The play is the evil he is paid to endure in the sweat of his brow; and the sooner it is over, the better.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

Your wits can't thicken in that soft moist air, on those white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on those hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You've no such colours in the sky, no such lure in the distances, no such sadness in the evenings. Oh the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heart-scalding, never satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming!

You can rave about Stravinsky without the slightest risk of being classified as a lunatic by the next generation .

Hate is the revenge of a coward intimidated.