What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.

I understand HOW. I do not understand WHY

Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.

Despotic governments can stand 'moral force' till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.

There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more of less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.