The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism.

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and it degrades those over whom it is exercised.

In England ... education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and would probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.

Memory is the diary that chronicles things that never have happened and couldn't possibly have happened.

Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by those who are on a level with them

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.