“I can only do what’s easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can’t, and won’t, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who’s strong enough to boss me or whom I’m strong enough to boss.”

It makes a difference doesn’t it, whether we fully fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?

Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.

Human relations are impossible. When they are real they are uncomfortable, and when they are comfortable they are unreal. It was for the journey into solitude that the human soul was created.

The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.

It is so difficult – at least, I find it difficult – to understand people who speak the truth.

But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable.

Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.

The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.

But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality.

Don’t begin with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have failed.

… there are shadows because there are hills.

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.

If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.

I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.