“Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.”

I read the newspapers with lively interest. It is seldom that they are absolutely, point-blank wrong. That is the popular belief, but those who are in the know can usually discern an embryo of truth, a little grit of fact, like the core of a pearl, round which have been deposited the delicate layers of ornament.

I’m quite deaf now; such a comfort.

Every Englishman abroad, until it is proved to the contrary, likes to consider himself a traveller and not a tourist.

The great charm in argument is really finding one’s own opinions, not other people’s.

News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read.

I regard writing not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed.

I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then, when I’m old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.

Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you.

Money is only useful when you get rid of it. It is like the odd card in ‘Old Maid’; the player who is finally left with it has lost.

There’s only one great evil in the world today. Despair.

Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.

Words should be an intense pleasure just as leather should be to a shoemaker.

I don’t believe that people would ever fall in love or want to be married if they hadn’t been told about it. It’s like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn’t been told it existed.

The splendid thing about education is that everyone wants it. Like influenza, you can give it away without losing any of it yourself.

Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.

Once you start changing a name, you see, there’s no reason ever to stop. One always hears one that sounds better.

Do not listen to those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious.

Every man whose character traits all lie in the mean is called a wise man.

The fact that laws were given to man, both affirmative and negative, supports the principle, that God’s knowledge of future events does not change their character. The great doubt that presents itself to our mind is the result of the insufficiency of our intellect.

Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.

I’m not the type of person that just needs to feel concrete and like nothing’s going to change. I revel in the change.

Say what you mean and mean what you say.

Be cool to people. Be nice to as many people as you can. Smile to as many people as you can, and have them smile back at you.

I’m the type of person to put myself in everybody else’s shoes.