With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

Theology is only thought applied to religion.

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.

For Tommy, on that hot and empty afternoon, was in a state of mind in which grown-up people go away and write books about their whole world, and stories about what it is like to be married, and plays about the important problems of modern times. Tommy, being only ten years old, was not able to do harm on this large and handsome scale.

Comradeship is quite a different thing from friendship. . .

London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.