A Writer's Notebook

She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.

There is no object to life. To nature nothing matters but the continuation of the species.

In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.

It was not till quite late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say: "I don't know."

Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to have a really affectionate mother.

Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.

Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.

What mean and cruel things men can do for the love of God.

Sentimentality is only sentiment that rubs you up the wrong way.

Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.

The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.

If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie.

Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.

There are men whose sense of humour is so ill developed that they still bear a grudge against Copernicus because he dethroned them from the central position in the universe. They feel it a personal affront that they can no longer consider themselves the pivot upon which turns the whole of created things.

I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.

The more intelligent a man is the more capable is he of suffering.

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.