Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one. At one time it had been a sign of madness to believe that the Earth goes round the Sun; today, to believe the past is inalterable. He might be alone in holding that belief, and if alone, then a lunatic. But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong.

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal.

The hospital is the antechamber to the tomb