In the conduct of life we make use of deliberation to justify ourselves in doing what we want to do.

Love is not always blind and there are few things that cause greater wretchedness than to love with all your heart someone who you know is unworthy of love.

Through the history of the world there have always been exploiters and exploited. There always will be ... because the great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves, they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good need masters.

Our wise old church...has discovered that if you will act as if you believed belief will be given to you; if you pray with doubt, but pray with sincerity, your doubt will be dispelled; if you will surrender yourself to the beauty of that liturgy the power of which over the human spirit has been proved by the experience of the ages, peace will descend upon you.

Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story.

But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of the pattern of life: the unhappiness he had suffered was no more than part of a decoration which was elaborate and beautiful; he told himself strenuously that he must accept with gaiety everything, dreariness and excitement, pleasure and pain, because it added to the richness of the design.

The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.