“But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.”

Their whole life depends on spending money, and now they’ve got none to spend. That’s our civilization and our education: bring up the masses to depend entirely on spending money, and then the money gives out.

He worked very hard, till nothing lived in him but his eyes.

They lived freely among the students, they argued with the men over philosophical, sociological and artistic matters, they were just as good as the men themselves: only better, since they were women.

Their words were only accidents in the mutual silence.

How she loved to listen when he thought only the horse could hear.

If you could only tell them that living and spending isn’t the same thing! But it’s no good. If only they were educated to live instead of earn and spend, they could manage very happily.

As we all know, too much of any divine thing is destruction

You’re spending your life without renewing it. You’ve got to be amused, properly healthily amused. You’re spending your vitality without making any. Can’t go on you know. Depression! Avoid depression!

I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.

A little morphine in all the air. It would be wonderfully refreshing for everyone.

What one does in one’s art, that is the breath of one’s being. What one does in one’s life, that is a bagatelle for the outsiders to fuss about.

When I hear modern people complain of being lonely then I know what has happened. They have lost the cosmos.

You can’t insure against the future, except by really believing in the best bit of you, and in the power beyond it.

She would have thought a woman would have died of shame. Instead of which, the shame died.

I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets.

This is the very worst wickedness, that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us.