“Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.”

Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talks that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.

Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.

It isn’t possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.

Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.

Sometimes I think too much fuss is made about marriage. Century after century of carnal embracement and we’re still no nearer to understanding one another.

The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.

When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.

Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.

But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.

Life is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?

I believe we shall come to care about people less and less, Helen. The more people one knows, the easier it becomes to replace them. It’s one of the curses of London. I quite expect to end my life caring most for a place.

At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.

How can I know what I think till I see what I say?

Don’t be mysterious; there isn’t the time.

I keep saying, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, you are as obscure as life is.

Forethought and prudence are the proper qualities of a leader. [Lat., Ratio et consilium, propriae ducis artes.]

Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.

Bodies are slow of growth, but are rapid in their dissolution. [Lat., Corpora lente augescent, cito extinguuntur.]

Secure against the designs of men, secure against the malignity of the Gods, they have accomplished a thing of infinite difficulty; that to them nothing remains even to be wished.

I find ways to make things affordable. If the kids want the looks, they can be able to go afford it.

So obscure are the greatest events, as some take for granted any hearsay, whatever its source, others turn truth into falsehood, and both errors find encouragement with posterity.

It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.