It is not open to the cool bystander . . . to set himself up as an impartial judge of events which would never have occurred had he outstretched a helping hand in time.

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

The world, nature, human beings, do not move like machines. The edges are never clear-cut, but always frayed. Nature never draws a line without smudging it.

Science bestowed immense new powers on man, and at the same time, created conditions which were largely beyond his comprehension.

The most formidable people in the world, and now the most dangerous, people who... lay down the doctrine that every frontier must be the starting out point for invasion.

Fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees...to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilisation.

Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.