“Men are in fact, quite unable to control their own inventions; they at best develop adaptability to the new conditions those inventions create.”

We have known an emotion which is in every case the same in kind, if not in degree; an emotion precious and uplifting.

By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall know the texture of men’s souls.

Public opinion’s always in advance of the law.

We are not living in a private world of our own.

Slang is vigorous and apt. Probably most of our vital words were once slang.

When Man evolved Pity, he did a queer thing – deprived himself of the power of living life as it is without wishing it to become something different.

Dawn has power to fertilise the most matter-of-fact vision.

Such was not quite the condition of Timothy’s on the Bayswater Road, for Timothy’s soul still had one foot in Timothy Forsyte’s body, and Smither kept the atmosphere unchanging, of camphor and port wine and house whose windows are only opened to air it twice a day.

It isn’t enough to love people because they’re good to you, or because in some way or other you’re going to get something by it.

Honesty of thought and speech and written word is a jewel.

There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don’t say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.

Only out of stir and change is born new salvation. To deny that is to deny belief in man, to turn our backs on courage!

The talked-about is always the last to hear the talk . . .

Justice is a machine that, when some one has once given it the starting push, rolls on of itself.

Love is not a hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of a wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown along the road by a wild wind.

Love of beauty is really only the sex instinct, which nothing but complete union satisfies.

In terms of adaptability, humans are pretty amazingly useless.