Do you recall Fred Merriville?” She stared at him. “Fred Merriville? Pray, what has he to say to anything?” “The poor fellow has nothing to say: he’s dead, alas!

There is a worse tyranny than that of ill-treatment. It is the tyranny of tears, vapours, appeals to feelings of affection and of gratitude!

You have a genius for bringing trouble upon yourself

[He was aware] of the value of the word of praise dropped at exactly the right moment; and he would have thought himself extremely stupid to withhold what cost him so little and was productive of such desirable results.

O God, I love you to the edge of madness, Venetia, but I'm not mad yet--not so mad that I don't know how disastrous it might be to you--to us both! You don't realize what an advantage I should be taking of your innocence!

People who start a sentence with personally (and they're always women) ought to be thrown to the lions. It's a repulsive habit.

But it is only in epic tragedies that gloom is unrelieved. In real life tragedy and comedy are so intermingled that when one is most wretched ridiculous things happen to make one laugh in spite of oneself.