The crude commercialism of America, its materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man who, according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature.

Learned conversation is either the affectation of the ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

I can resist everything except temptation.

Even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less then Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable.

We live in the age of the overworked and the undereducated.

I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.