Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.

The author always loads his dice, but he must never let the reader see that he has done so.

He exulted in the possession of himself once more; he realized how much of the delight of the world he had lost when he was absorbed in that madness which they called love; he had had enough of it; he did not want to be in love anymore if love was that.

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.

The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.

It is astonishing how many books I find there is no need for me to read at all.

The first duty of a woman is to be pretty, the second is to be well-groomed, and the third is never to contradict.