One might well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.

The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.

Only the insane take themselves seriously.

There is in the human race some dark spirit of recalcitrance, always pulling us in the direction contrary to that in which we are reasonably expected to go.

Not that I had any special reason for hating school. Strange as it may seem to my readers, I was not unpopular there. I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.

To destroy is still the strongest instinct of our nature.

Great men are but life-sized. Most of them, indeed, are rather short.