Like a sea-beast fished up from the depths, or a diver too suddenly hoisted, my veins threatened to burst from the fall in pressure. I had great anxiety and no means of relieving it ... And then it was that the Muse of Painting came to my rescue - out of charity and out of chivalry ... - and said, "Are these toys any good to you? They amuse some people."

Whenever I feel the need to take some exercise I lie down until the feeling goes away.

The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative.

It is alarming ... to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal Palace while he is still organising and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience.

I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which lead to a dark gulf.

I drink a great deal. I sleep a little, and I smoke cigar after cigar. That is why I am in two-hundred-percent form.

Most of the world's work is done by people who don't feel very well.