Why is humanity so excessive in the way it does things? The golden mean seems out of fashion.

One day I shall write a little book of conduct myself, and I shall call it Social Problems of the Unsociable. And the root problem, beneath a hundred varying manifestions, is How to Escape. How to escape, that is, at those times, be they few or frequent, when you want to keep yourself to yourself.

Mozart is everyone's tea, pleasing to highbrows, middlebrows and lowbrows alike, though they probably all get different kinds of pleasure from him.

Nothing, perhaps, is strange, once you have accepted life itself, the great strange business which includes all lesser strangeness.

The last sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost - to lie to oneself. Lying to other people - that's a small thing in comparison.

The impulse to ask questions is among the more primitive human lusts.

How agreeable to watch, from the other side of the high stile, this mighty creature, this fat bull of Bashan, snorting, champing, pawing the earth, lashing the tail, breathing defiance at heaven and at me ... his heart hot with hate, unable to climb a stile.