When you've just made the most complete fool of yourself, you feel the need of a specially high horse to ride.

There is and always has been for me a peculiar need to write. This is very different from wanting to be a writer. To be a writer always seemed something so far removed from my talents and abilities and imaginings that it didn't afflict me at all as a notion when I was young. But I was always conscious that I wanted to write.

I do not approve of children being beaten. It is always a confession of failure.

A lie that is half a truth is ever the hardest to fight.

You can't do such a lot and do it all so well and have much time left for the ordinary human feelings.

It is the man who is sure of himself who disregards the opinion of the world. To be sure is to have power.

there are virtues which are very well in the abstract, but which, encountered in the flesh, can be a source of extreme irritation.