“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.”

When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.

I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man’s pleasure when they come a cropper.

The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.

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.

Money pads the edges of things.

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.

We move between two darknesses.

Adventures do occur, but not punctually.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don’t believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art’s sake.

I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I’d like to be.

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.

There is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.

Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.

I won’t be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult.

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.

It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different.

I get bitter, angry and disbelieving and I tell my kids there a lot of idiots out there.

We need to block out the outside world; we need to disbelieve anything that would doubt us, because everyone will doubt us if we allow them that space.

If I don’t have the freedom to disbelieve, I cannot believe.