We must be clear about what we want to paint. This adds a further principle to our previous list of principles. We have said we must be fond of this world, even in order to change it.

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.

Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.

It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.

Men rush toward complexity; but yearn for simplicity.

It is not greedy to enjoy a good dinner, any more than it is to enjoy a good concert. But I do think there is something greedy about trying to enjoy the dinner and the concert at the same time.