No one can understand history without continually relating the long periods which are constantly mentioned to the experiences of our own short lives.

I have had a number of threatening letters each week, some telling me the actual time and method of my death, and I don't like it.

I devoured Gibbon. I rode triumphantly through it from end to end and enjoyed it all.

You create your own universe as you go along.

Millions who could not follow closely or accurately the main events of the War looked day after day in the papers for the fortunes of Mafeking, and when finally the news of its relief was flashed throughout the world, the streets of London became impassable, and the floods of sterling, cockney patriotism were released in such a deluge of unbridled, delirious joy as was never witnessed again till Armistace Night, 1918.

There is a forgotten, nay almost forbidden word, which means more to me than any other. That word is England.

Do not turn the superior eye of critical passivity upon these efforts .... We must not be ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint-box.