if you are perfectly willing to shock an individual verbally, the next thing you will be doing is to shock him practically.

Social distinctions concern themselves ultimately with whom you may and may not marry.

Most men have always wanted as much as they could get; and possession has always blunted the fine edge of their altruism.

... it is a great mistake to confuse conventionality with simplicity ... it takes a good deal of intelligence and a great many inhibitions to follow a social code.

It is not permissible to lie merely to save one's face. But it is sometimes permissible to lie to save another person's face.

Simplicity is an acquired taste. Mankind, left free, instinctively complicates life.

The past is discredited because it is not modern. Not to be modern is the great sin. So, perhaps, it is. But every one has, in his day, been modern. And surely even modernity is a poor thing beside immortality. Since we must all die, is it not perhaps better to be a dead lion than a living dog?