One never knows whether people have principles on principle or whether for their own personal satisfaction.

Everyone has the best of feelings towards mankind in general, but not towards the individual man. We'll kill men, but we want to save mankind. And that isn't right, your Reverence. The world will be an evil place as long as people don't believe in other people.

A short life is better for mankind, for a long life would deprive man of his optimism.

The average cooking in the average hotel for the average Englishman explains to a large extent the English bleakness and taciturnity. Nobody can beam and warble while chewing pressed beef smeared with diabolical mustard. Nobody can exult aloud while ungluing from his teeth a quivering tapioca pudding.

Art must not serve might.

Only years of practice will teach you the mysteries and bold certainty of a real gardener, who treads at random, yet tramples on nothing.

Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart.