As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals -- or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all.

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

The superior thing ... was to be late. Lateness showed that serene contempt for the illusion we call time which is so necessary to ensure the respect of others and oneself. Only the servile are punctual.

One never feels such distaste for one's countrymen and countrywomen as when one meets them abroad.

Life, for all its agonies...is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing...and whatever is to come after it -- we shall not have this life again.

Nearly all novels are too long.

To be prejudiced is the privilege of the thinking human being. ... The open mind is the empty mind.