"It may be that if I lead the life I've planned for myself it may affect others; the effect may be no greater than the ripple caused by a stone thrown in a pond, but one ripple causes another."

"He was the kind of man with whom one would have hesitated to pass a lonely evening, but with whom one might cheerfully have looked forward to spending six months."

"I thought I should be a fool to allow work to interfere with a delight in the passing moment that I might never enjoy again so fully."

"Nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy."

"Passion is destructive; if it does not destroy, it dies."

"In point of fact, however, they were much more anxious to tell him about their doings than to listen to his."

"I don't believe in the god of the Christians who gave his son in order to save mankind. That's a myth. But why should it have arisen if it didn't express some deep-seated intuition in men? I don't know what I believe, because it's instinctive, and how can you describe an instinct with words? I have an instinct that the power that rules us, human beings, animals and things, is a dark and cruel power and that everything has to be paid for, a power that demands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and that though we may writhe and squirm we have to submit, for the power is ourselves."

"I'm beginning to think it's very hard to know what to believe in this world."

"It looked as though the people we thought we knew best carried secrets that they didn't even know themselves. Charley had a sudden inkling that human beings were infinitely mysterious. The fact was that you knew nothing about anybody."

"It was like one of those comedies where the sets are good and the clothes pretty, where the dialogue is clever and the acting competent, so that you pass an agreeable evening, but a week later cannot remember a thing about it."

"Stunning, isn't it?" he said then, giving her arm an affectionate pressure. "Yes, it's all right. What business is it of yours?" Charley turned his head sharply. No one had ever asked him a question like that about a picture before. "What on earth d'you mean? It's one of the great portraits of the world. Titian, you know." "I daresay. But what's it got to do with you?" Charley didn't quite know what to say. "Well, it's a very fine picture and it's beautifully painted. Of course it doesn't tell a story if that's what you mean." "No, I don't," she smiled. "I don't suppose it's got anything to do with me really." "Then why should you bother about it?"

"It was too sweeping a judgement to be satisfactory; the idea dawned in Charley's mind that perhaps men were more complicated than he had imagined, and if you just said that a man was this or that you couldn't get very far."

"The world he knew, the peaceful happy world of the surface, was like a pretty lake in which were reflected the dappled clouds and the willows that grew on its bank, where carefree boys paddled their canoes and the girls with them trailed their fingers in the soft water. It was terrifying to think that below, just below, dangerous weeds waved tentacles to ensnare you and all manner of strange, horrible things, poisonous snakes, fish with murderous jaws, waged an unceasing and hidden warfare."

"You know, a thing that has always struck me is people's fiendish eagerness to give anyone away. They pretend it's public spirit, I don't believe a word of it; I don't believe it's even, as a rule anyway, the desire for notoriety; I believe it's just due to the baseness of human nature that gets a kick out of injuring others. There's a whole mass of people who can't wait if they have the chance of doing down someone who's trying to get away with anything."

""God? What has God to do with it? Do you suppose I can look at the misery in which the vast majority of the people live in the world and believe in God? Do you suppose I believe in God who let the Bolsheviks kill my poor, simple father? Do you know what I think? I think God has been dead for millions upon millions of years. I think when he took infinity and set in motion the process that has resulted in the universe, he died, and for ages and ages men have sought and worshipped a being who ceased to exist in the act of making existence possible for them." He wondered if there was anything in what she said, this woman with her tragic history and miserable life, that God had died when he created the wide world; and was he lying dead on some vast mountain range on a dead star or was he absorbed into the universe he caused to be?"

"It's so wonderful to shut out the world for a few hours. Rest, peace, silence, solitude. You would think they were luxuries that only the very rich can afford, and yet they cost nothing. Strange that they should be so hard to come by."

"Aren't you missing a lot of fun? You know, one's young for such a little while."

"By the time I was twenty-four I had constructed a complete system of philosophy. It rested on two principles: The Relativity of Things and The Circumferentiality of Man. I have since discovered that the first was not a very original discovery. It may be that the other was profound, but though I have racked my brains I cannot for the life of me remember what it was."

"Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul."

"We are not the same persons this year as last ; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person."

"Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved."

"Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long."

"Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth."

"There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless."

"Tradition is a guide and not a jailer."

"The great critic ... must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things."

"It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise..."

"I have been forced to conclude from this that we know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits."

"I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ."

"The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel."

"The poignancy which all beauty has."

"Life isn't long enough for love and art."

"I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present."

"It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive."

"She was making money. But she could not get over the idea that to earn her living was somewhat undignified, and she was inclined to remind you that she was a lady by birth."

"Whatever anguish she suffered she concealed. She saw shrewdly that the world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willingly avoids the sight of distress."

"Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation."

"I had not yet learnt how contradictory is human nature; I did not know how much pose there is in the sincere, how much baseness in the noble, or how much goodness in the reprobate."

"I did not then know the besetting sin of woman, the passion to discuss her private affairs with anyone who is willing to listen."

"I reflected, while I chatted with the woman I had been asked to ‘take in’, that civilized man practises a strange ingenuity in wasting on tedious exercises the brief span of his life."

"Impropriety is the soul of wit."

"I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul's good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed."

"The modern clergyman has acquired in his study of the science which I believe is called exegesis an astonishing facility for explaining things away."

"It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories."

"He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it."

"D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children."

"The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore."

"He was always seeking for a meaning in life, and here it seemed to him that a meaning was offered; but it was obscure and vague. He was profoundly troubled. He saw what looked like the truth as by flashes of lightning on a dark, stormy night you might see a mountain range. He seemed to see that a man need not leave his life to chance, but that his will was powerful; he seemed to see that self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion; he seemed to see that the inward life might be as manifold, as varied, as rich with experience, as the life of one who conquered realms and explored unknown lands."

"It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic."

"There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved."