“The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy.”

I think the greatest thing in the world is to believe in people.

The value of a sentiment is the amount of sacrifice you are prepared to make for it.

Life calls the tune, we dance.

The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but as a family; this resentment expressed itself in an added perfection of raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an exaggeration of family importance, and the sniff.

Once admit that we have the right to inflict unnecessary suffering and you destroy the very basis of human society.

It is an age of stir and change, a season of new wine and old bottles. Yet, assuredly, in spite of breakages and waste, a wine worth the drinking is all the time being made.

The French cook; we open tins.

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

Society is built on marriage … marriage and its consequences.

It is by muteness that a dog becomes for one so utterly beyond value; with him one is at peace, where words play no torturing tricks.

Beauty means this to one person, perhaps, and that to the other. And yet when any one of us has seen or heard or read that which to us is beautiful.

Under its influence, wholly or in part, have blossomed weekends, strong nerves, strong legs, strong language… equality of sex, good digestion and professional occupation – in four words, the emanicipation of women.

A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms outside we call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and colour are always, wild!

And they who curb prejudice and seek honorably to know and speak the truth are the only builders of a better life.

He was afflicted by the thought that where Beauty was, nothing ever ran quite straight, which no doubt, was why so many people looked on it as immoral.

I drink the wine of aspiration and the drug of illusion. Thus I am never dull.