"It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature—neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities."

"A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms."

"You calculated how to be uncalculating, and are natural by art!"

"Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle."

"I have seldom known a man cunning with his brush who was not simple with his tongue; or, indeed, any skill in particular that was not allied to general stupidity."

"Work hard and be poor, do nothing and get more."

"Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor."

"A well proportioned mind is one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safely say that it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman, tortured as a heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. Also, on the other hand, that it will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet, revered as a priest, or exalted as a king. Its usual blessings are happiness and mediocrity."

"Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them."

"To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction — every kind of evidence in the logician's list — have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation."

"Love is a possible strength, in an actual weakness. Marriage transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of imbecility it supplants."

"The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgueux shone with a fiery red. To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement."

"And at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be — and whenever I look up, there will be you."

"Good, but not religious-good."

"For of all the miseries attaching to miserable love, the worst is the misery of thinking that the passion which is the cause of them all may cease."

"A nice unparticular man."

"Or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture."

"To discover evil in a new friend is to most people only an additional experience."

"With all, the beautiful things of the earth become more dear as they elude pursuit; but with some natures utter elusion is the one special event which will make a passing love permanent for ever."

"It is commonly said that no man was ever converted by argument, but there is a single one which will make any Laodicean in England, let him be once love-sick, wear prayer-books and become a zealous Episcopalian – the argument that his sweetheart can be seen from his pew."

"To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall."

"It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs."

"The heath and changes of weather were quite blotted out from their eyes for the present. They were enclosed in a sort of luminous mist, which hid from them surroundings of any inharmonious colour, and gave to all things the character of light. When it rained they were charmed, because they could remain indoors together all day with such a show of reason; when it was fine they were charmed, because they could sit together on the hills. They were like those double stars which revolve round and round each other, and from a distance appear to be one."

"Dullest of dull-hued Days!"

"When that half-burnt log and those cinders were alight she was alive! Little has been changed here yet. I can do nothing. My life creeps like a snail."

"No man can change the common lot to rare."

"Man, whence is he? / Too bad to be the work of a god, too good for the work of chance."

"Trust no friend without faults, and love a maiden, but no angel."

"Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing."

"For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying."

"I, who ne'er Went for myself a begging, go a borrowing, And that for others. Borrowing's much the same As begging; just as lending upon usury Is much the same as thieving."

"The worst of superstitions is to think One's own most bearable."

"I have found it to be true that the older I've become the better my life has become."

"Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself."

"What is a hero without love for mankind?"

"It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important."

"I was taken around and shown things as a "useful idiot" […] that’s what my role was […] I can’t understand why I was so gullible."

"Pearls mean tears."

"Oh Christ. I couldn't care less. … I can't say I'm overwhelmed with surprise. I'm 88 years old and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, so I think they were probably thinking they'd probably better give it to me now before I've popped off."

"Better Counsel comes overnight."

"I have read a lot of Doris Lessing, and her interrogation of human behavior and history always makes a big impression on me."

"The Golden Notebook for some reason surprised people but it was no more than you would hear women say in their kitchens every day in any country. … I was really astounded that some people were shocked."

"What matters most is that we learn from living."

"Parents should leave books lying around marked "forbidden" if they want their children to read."

"I have to face the fact that I and my high-minded comrades, both those in that chimerical Communist Party in Southern Rhodesia, and many I have met since ... were of the stuff of those murderers with a clear conscience. We were lucky, that's all."

"Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so."

"All political movements are like this — we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility."

"The current publishing scene is extremely good for the big, popular books. They sell them brilliantly, market them and all that. It is not good for the little books. And really valuable books have been allowed to go out of print. In the old days, the publishers knew that these difficult books, the books that appeal only to a minority, were very productive in the long run. Because they're probably the books that will be read in the next generation. It's heart-breaking how often I have to say when I'm giving talks, "This book is out of print. This book is out of print." It's a roll call of dead books."

"I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme... If they write about their own experiences, something true is going to emerge."

"[On her first marriage ] I don't think marriages are like that now. It's when you walk into a role. The life was all laid down, what you ate, everything you did, and I went through it all as if it were a role in a play, really, and I hated it bitterly."