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

I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual.

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

I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.

Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful.

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.

They fought their way to control by rebate and drawback, bribe and blackmail, espionage and price cutting, by ruthless efficiency of organization.

From better access to American markets for our beef and lamb farmers, to cutting tariffs on dairy products like cheese, which are up to 17 per cent, there are significant opportunities for UK farming.

The nineteenth century lynching mob cuts off ears, toes, and fingers, strips off flesh, and distributes portions of the body as souvenirs among the crowd.

My mother had very humble beginnings – to put it mildly. Her dad built their home out of timber that he cut down on their land. No heat, no air-conditioning – ‘no foolishness,’ as he would call it.

Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue.

Samson is not alone in the history of man in failing in this regard. Delilah is still cutting the hair of man today!

The sculptor cuts away here, smoothes there, makes this line lighter, this other purer, until he or she has shown a beautiful face upon the statue.

Too bad all the people who know how to run this country are busy running taxicabs or cutting hair.