There is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison. But in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for instance, you are not forced to read books written by the warders and the governor. . . .In the prison you are not forced to sit listening to turnkeys discoursing without charm or interest on subjects that they don't understand and don't care about, and therefore incapable of making you understand or care about. In a prison they may torture your body; but they do not torture your brains.

No Englishman is ever fairly beaten

Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics.

Every man to whom salvation is offered has an inalienable natural right to say 'No, thank you: I prefer to retain my full moral responsibility: it is not good for me to be able to load a scapegoat with my sins: I should be less careful how I committed them if I knew they would cost me nothing.

Everybody who does not live in a prostitute's bed and on a diet of cocaine snow is called an ascetic nowadays.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

You sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanliness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly.