What is art? It is not decoration. It is the re-living of experience.

Christianity must be regarded not as a final revelation but as a phase of revelation.

All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.

[On Jane Austen:] To believe her limited in range because she was harmonious in method is as sensible as to imagine that when the Atlantic Ocean is as smooth as a mill-pond it shrinks to the size of a mill-pond.

There was too much hatred in the world; it was manifestly as dangerous as gunpowder, yet people let it lie about, in the way of ignition.

His smile bore the same relation to a real smile as false teeth do to real teeth.

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