“Love could never come to full fruition till it was destroyed.”

Light-heartedness always made Soames suspicious – there was generally some reason for it.

Not the least hard thing to bear when they go from us, these quiet friends, is that they carry away with them so many years of our own lives.

He might wish and wish and never get it – the beauty and the loving in the world!

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 . . .

Life is too short to spend it being angry, bored, or dull.

We are growing serious, and, let me tell you, that’s the very next step to being dull.

The resurrection was God’s way of stamping PAID IN FULL right across history so that nobody could miss it.

If there is no dull and determined effort, there will be no brilliant achievement.

The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes.

Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talks that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.

My chief objection is that 99% of sermons and Sunday School teachings are so agonizingly dull.

Good Lord, I don’t know what ‘rights’ a man has! And I don’t know the solution of boredom. If I did, I’d be the one philosopher that had the cure for living. But I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull.