“The most beautiful words in the English language are ‘not guilty’.”

Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free man.

Everywhere, within man and without, there is devastation, instability, chaos, and evidence of some prolonged rout.

Processing the human raw material is naturally more complicated than processing lumber.

In war it is necessary to kill as many people as possible — such is the cynical logic of war. Brutality in a fight is unavoidable; have you seen how cruelly children fight in the streets?

In the maxim of the past you cannot go anywhere.

Be good, be kind, be humane, and charitable; love your fellows; console the afflicted; pardon those who have done you wrong.

Only mothers can think of the future – because they give birth to it in their children.

One has to be able to count if only so that at fifty one doesn’t marry a girl of twenty.

Even a bad man is better than a good book.

There is no one on earth more disgusting and repulsive than he who gives alms. Even as there is no one so miserable as he who accepts them.

The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.

You will not drown the truth in seas of blood.

Keep reading books, but remember that a book’s only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself.

Every new time will give its law.

God is a complex of ideas formed by the tribe, the nation, and humanity, which awake and organize social feelings and aim to link the individual to society and to bridle the zoological individualism.

Many contemporary authors drink more than they write.

If you actually look at the etymology of the word ‘hallucination’, what it’s come to mean in English is a delusion. But what it really means in the original language is to wander in the mind. That’s the meaning of ‘hallucination’, to wander in the mind.

We’ve got to have rules and obey them. After all, we’re not savages. We’re English, and the English are best at everything.

In India the odd thing is that English is this almost artificial language floating on the surface of a place with about fifty other languages. The same is true of Nigeria but even more so.

If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it.

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education – sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.

In terms of language, English is very dominant vis-Ã-vis African language. That in itself is a power relationship – between languages and communities – because the English language is a determinant of the ladder to achievement.

And even in terms of justice, law codes, the legal system. A person who does not know English in Africa is excluded from that system because he can only operate through acts of translation.

There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.