I had a glorious father, I had no father at all.

... it matters not what natural endowment a race may have if it prostitutes itself to the service of death.

one of Mr. [Thomas] Hardy's ancestors must have married a weeping willow. There are pages and pages in his collected poems which are simply plain narratives in ballad form of how an unenjoyable time was had by all.

The [nineteenth-century] young men who were Puritans in politics were anti-Puritans in literature. They were willing to die for the independence of Poland or the Manchester Fenians; and they relaxed their tension by voluptuous reading in Swinburne.

I find to my astonishment that an unhappy marriage goes on being unhappy when it is over.

All our Western thought is founded on this repulsive pretence that pain is the proper price of any good thing.

We all drew on the comfort which is given out by the major works of Mozart, which is as real and material as the warmth given up by a glass of brandy.