We once discussed which were the cleanest troops in the trenches, taken by nationalities. We agreed on a descending-order like this: English and German Protestants; Northern Irish, Welsh and Canadians; Irish and German Catholics; Scots; Mohammedan Indians; Algerians; Portugese; Belgians; French. We put the Belgians and French there for spite; they could not have been dirtier than the Algerians and the Portugese.

As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.

Hardly one soldier in a hundred was inspired by religious feeling of even the crudest kind. It would have been difficult to remain religious in the trenches even if one had survived the irreligion of the training battalion at home.

What we now call "finance" is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.

If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.

The poet's first rule must be never to bore his readers; and his best way of keeping this rule is never to bore himself-which, of course, means to write only when he has something urgent to say.

There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.