...smoking is just a habit. 'Tolstoy', she said, mentioning someone I hadn't met, 'says that just as much pleasure can be got from twirling the fingers'. My impulse was to tell her Tolstoy was off his onion, but I choked down the heated words. For all I know, the man might be a bosom pal of hers and she might resent criticism of him, however justified.

It is not the being paid money in advance that jars the sensitive artist: it is the having to work.

Providence seems to look after the chumps of this world; and, personally, I'm all for it.

It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time.

But everything is relative, Bertie... You, for instance, are my relative, and I am your relative.

Men capable of governing empires fail to control a small white ball, which presents no difficulties whetever to others with one ounce more brain than a cuckoo clock. I wish to goodness I knew the man who invented this infernal game. I'd strangle him. But I suppose he's been dead for ages. Still, I could go and jump on his grave.

...there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this: "He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.