“You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.”

Unfortunately sometimes one can’t do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.

When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch’s statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.

There’s always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.

The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither.

I’d sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.

In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.

The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.

There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.

I personally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you get neither: you’re ground down by convention. You can’t think as you like and you can’t act as you like. That’s because it’s a democratic nation. I expect America’s worse.

It’s no good trying to keep up old friendships. It’s painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.

Life wouldn’t be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

Now the answer … is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life and life has no meaning.

Any society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and will ultimately lose its wealth as well

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.

Adultery is not a crime, it’s an amusement.

They say that adultery is the main thing that can damage a marriage, but it’s not. It’s boredom.

Married, but not to each other.

They tried to say that being gay is a sin, and I said that adultery is a sin.

Adultery is responsible for breaking up more marriages, but do we put that in the Constitution? It’s absurd.

In adultery, there is usually tenderness and self-sacrifice; in murder, courage; in profanation and blasphemy, a certain satanic splendour. Judas elected those offences unvisited by any virtues: abuse of confidence and informing.