"After all," as a pretty girl once said to me, "women are a sex by themselves, so to speak."

I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.

The loveliest face in all the world will not please you if you see it suddenly eye to eye, at a distance of half an inch from your own.

The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.

Nobody ever died of laughter.

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.

History does not repeat itself. The historians repeat one another.