Misery, anger, indignation, discomfort-those conditions produce literature. Contentment-never. So there you are.

A skittish motorbike with a touch of blood in it is better than all the riding animals on earth, because of its logical extension of our faculties, and the hint, the provocation, to excess conferred by its honeyed untiring smoothness.

The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor.

Your success will be proportioned to the amount of mental effort you devote to it.

He was old and wise, which meant tired and disappointed.

Suppose we were (as we might be) an influence, an idea, a thing intangible, invulnerable, without front or back, drifting about like a gas? Armies were like plants, immobile, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head. We might be a vapour, blowing where we listed Ours should be a war of detachment. We were to contain the enemy by the silent threat of a vast, unknown desert

Mankind has had ten-thousand years of experience at fighting and if we must fight, we have no excuse for not fighting well.