All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears.

My memory is certainly in my hands. I can remember things only if I have a pencil and I can write with it and I can play with it. ... I think your hand concentrates for you. I don't know why it should be so.

Mr. James Joyce is a great man who is entirely without taste.

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.

To every man in the world there is one person of whom he knows little: whom he would never recognize if he met him walking down the street, whose motives are a mystery to him. That is himself.

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

The aged are terrible - mere heaps of cinders on the grass from which none can tell how tall the flames once were or what company gathered round them.