“So I shan’t ever marry, for there aren’t such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.”

It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons.

People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness.

The other damned saw what was happening and caught hold of it too. She was indignant and cried, “Let go-it’s my onion,” and as soon as she said, “my onion,” the stalk broke and she fell back into the flames.

Aziz winked at him slowly and said: “…There are many ways of being a man; mine is to express what is deepest in my heart.

She stopped and leant her elbows against the parapet of the embankment. He did likewise. There is at times a magic in identity of position; it is one of the things that have suggested to us eternal comradeship.

It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.

There are moments when the inner life actually ‘pays,’ when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.

Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.

One of the evils of money is that it tempts us to look at it rather than at the things that it buys.

My temple stands not upon Mount Moriah but in the Elysian Field where even the immoral are admitted. My motto is ‘Lord, I disbelieve – help thou my unbelief.

You confuse what’s important with what’s impressive.

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world.

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.

Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend.

It has become a certainty now that if you will only advertise sufficiently you may make a fortune by selling anything.

Why is it that when men and women congregate, though the men may beat the women in numbers by ten to one, and through they certainly speak the louder.

I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action.

The very old certainly do not go back on lunch remains but they do bite back at old conversational topics.

In a country like South Africa, writers have nuisance value, because those of us who have become known overseas have certainly helped to inform people about what life is like there.

Any guy who can maintain a positive attitude without much playing time certainly earns my respect.

Paris is one of the largest, and certainly it is the pleasantest, of modern American cities.

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.