Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.

To be born into this earth is to be born into uncongenial surroundings, hence to be born into a romance.

Now it has appeared to me unfair that humanity should be engaged perpetually in calling all those things bad which have been good enough to make other things better, in everlastingly kicking down the ladder by which it has climbed. It has appeared to me that progress should be something else besides a continual parricide; therefore I have investigated the dust-heaps of humanity, and found a treasure in all of them. I have found that humanity is not incidentally engaged, but eternally and systematically engaged, in throwing gold into the gutter and diamonds into the sea.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet. Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.

Now, among the heresies that are spoken in this matter is the habit of calling a grey day a "colourless" day. Grey is a colour, and can be a very powerful and pleasing colour.... A grey clouded sky is indeed a canopy between us and the sun; so is a green tree, if it comes to that. But the grey umbrellas differ as much as the green in their style and shape, in their tint and tilt. One day may be grey like steel, and another grey like dove’s plumage. One may seem grey like the deathly frost, and another grey like the smoke of substantial kitchens.