Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment or private judgment, I am firmly of the opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Campden Hill, Kensington; and baptised according to the formularies of the Church of England in the little church of St. George opposite the large Waterworks Tower that dominated that ridge.

It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the saints than to speak folly wisely like the deans.

Very few reputations are gained by unsullied virtue.

The things we see every day are the things we never see at all.

Even in an empire of atheists the dead man is always sacred.

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.