... when the Spaniards persecuted heretics they may have been crude, but they were not being unreasonable or unpractical. They were at least wiser than the people of to-day who pretend that it does not matter what a man believes, as who should say that the flavour and digestibility of a pudding will have nothing to do with its ingredients.

History sometimes acts as madly as heredity, and her most unpredictable performances are often her most glorious.

Great music is in a sense serene; it is certain of the values it asserts.

If ever peace is to be imposed on the world it will only be because a large number of men who could have taken part in the drill display by the Guards or Marines or at the Royal Tournament turn that strength and precision to the service of life.

Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one's own Trojan horse.

[The satirist] must fully possess, at least in the world of the imagination, the quality the lack of which he is deriding in others.

It's my profession to bring people from various outlying districts of the mind to the normal. There seems to be a general feeling it's the place where they ought to be. Sometimes I don't see the urgency myself.