The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.

Before the war, and especially before the Boer War, it was summer all the year round.

It [England] is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts.

Several of them would have protested if they could have found the right arguments.

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

Where this age differs from those immediately preceding it is that a liberal intelligentsia is lacking. Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion, and such truisms as that a machine-gun is still a machine-gun even when a "good" man is squeezing the trigger have turned into heresies which it is actually becoming dangerous to utter.

In my opinion nothing has contributed more to the corruption of the original idea of socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country.