One of the reasons, surely, why women have been credited with less perfect veracity than men is that the burden of conventional falsehood falls chiefly on them.

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.

Ignorance of what real learning is, and a consequent suspicion of it; materialism, and a consequent intellectual laxity, both of these have done destructive work in the colleges.

We put [young children] into kindergarten where their reasoning powers are ruined; or, if we can afford it, we buy Montessori outfits that were invented for semi-imbeciles in Italian slums; or we send them to outdoor schools and give them prizes for sleeping.

Originality usually amounts only to plagiarizing something unfamiliar.

Civilization is merely an advance in taste: accepting, all the time, nicer things, and rejecting nasty ones.

You can bear anything if it is not your fault.