“envy, as a rule, is of success rather than of merit. No one would have objected to his talent deserving recognition – only to his getting it.”

A butler in an English household should, however, be English, and as much like an archbishop as possible.

an optimist is the man who looks after your eyes, and the pessimist the person who looks after your feet.

It’s always something to get one’s wish, even if the wish is a failure.

Absurdly improbable things are quite as liable to happen in real life as in weak literature.

Fog and hypocrisy – that is to say, shadow, convention, decency – these were the very things that lent to London its poetry and romance.

Since in a crisis they are usually dense, fatally doing the wrong thing. It is hardly too much to say that most domestic tragedies are caused by the feminine intuition of men and the want of it in women.

All really frank people are amusing, and would remain so if they could remember that other people may sometimes want to be frank and amusing too.

As a rule the person found out in a betrayal of love holds, all the same, the superior position of the two. It is the betrayed one who is humiliated.

Everything comes to the man who won’t wait.

Some men are born husbands; they have a passion for domesticity, for a fireside, for a home. Yet, curiously, these men very rarely stay at home. Apparently what they want is to have a place to get away from.

The Futurists?…. Well, of course, they are already past.

It depresses me, since naturally it gives the contrary impression. It can’t be real. It ought to be but it isn’t. If the noisy person meant what he said, he wouldn’t say it.

To a woman–I mean, a nice woman–there is no such thing as men. There is a man; and either she is so fond of him that she can talk of nothing else, however unfavourably, or so much in love with him that she never mentions his name.

Looking at the poems of John Gray when I saw the tiniest rivulet of text meandering through the very largest meadow of margin,

She could carry off anything; and some people said that she did.

It is all very well to say that children are happier with mud pies and rag dolls than with these elaborate delights.

Modesty is a valuable merit … in people who have no other, and the appearance of it is extremely useful to those who have.

Our age is one in which usefulness is thought to be the chief merit of nature; in which the attainment of power

There is no merit where there is no trial; and till experience stamps the mark of strength, cowards may pass for heroes, and faith for falsehood.

To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason – to believe something by faith – is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect.

Fame is an accident; merit a thing absolute.

Numbers on a screen for merit, A falsehood of an ideal you. Roll the dice and pay your price. A great pride in your work you must pursue.

Don’t be a slave to modern vices, Chasing false merit, distraction untoward. Take time for yourself, to be alone with your thoughts. Imagination the real reward.

People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.