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.

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe.

Music-hall songs provide the dull with wit, just as proverbs provide them with wisdom.

What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.

And I have the sunset, and the Tuscan wine, and the white teeth of the women in Rome. I am a traveler in Romance.

Evil is a necessary part of the order of the universe.

I do not think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards.