When you read a biography remember that the truth is never fit for publication.

A soldier is an anachronism of which we must get rid.

The sex illusion is not a fixed quantity: not what mathematicians call a constant. It varies from zero in my wife's case to madness in that of our stepsister.

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.

Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare.

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.

There is nothing on earth more exquisite than a bonny book, with well-placed columns of rich black writing in beautiful borders, and illuminated pictures cunningly inset. But nowadays, instead of looking at books, people read them. A book might as well be one of those orders for bacon and bran.