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.

You must always believe that life is as extraordinary as music says it is.

Literature must be an analysis of experience and a synthesis of the findings into a unity.

Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is.

We think in youth that our bodies are identical to ourselves and have the same interests, but discover later in life that they are heartless companions who have been accidentally yoked with us, and who are as likely as not, in our extreme sickness or old age, to treat us with less mercy than we would have received at the hands of the worst bandits.

When those of our army whose voices are likely to coo tell us that the day of sex antagonism is over and that henceforth we only have to advance hand in hand with the male, I do not believe it.

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