Olive Schreiner is less a woman than a geographical fact. Just as one thinks of Egypt as a foreground for the Pyramids, so South Africa seems the setting of that warm, attractive, aggressive personality. Her work is far inferior to her.

the bad is more easily perceived than the good. A fresh lobster does not give such pleasure to the consumer as a stale one will give him pain.

There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.

Art and propaganda have this much connection, that if a propaganda makes art impossible, it is clearly damned.

For the sake of my country, and perhaps a little for the sake of my soul, I have given up the deep peace of being in opposition.

Fiction and poetry are the only way one can stop time and give an account of an experience and nail it down so that it lasts for ever.

Most magazines have that look of being predestined to be left which one sees on the faces of the women whose troubles bring them to the Law Courts.