Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.

It is one of the tragedies of the half-educated that they develop late, when they are already committed to some wrong way of life.

I have no wish to take life, not even human life

For after all, what is there behind, except money? Money for the right kind of education, money for influential friends, money for leisure and peace of mind, money for trips to Italy. Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O lord, give me money, only money.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

A dirty joke is not, of course, a serious attack on morality, but it is a sort of mental rebellion, a momentary wish that things were otherwise.

War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.