God is not Love in the East. He is Power, although Mercy may temper it.
We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.
Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something.
For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.
The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.
There is much good luck in the world, but it is luck. We are none of us safe. We are children, playing or quarrelling on the line.
Love is always being given where it is not required.
Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had a bad press. It is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things.
The people I admire most are those who are sensitive and want to create something or discover something, and do not see life in terms of power.
Reformers who are obsessed with purity and cannot see that their obsession is impure.
Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish!
The woman who can’t influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself.
Some reviews give pain. This is regrettable, but no author has the right to whine. He was not obliged to be an author. He invited publicity, and he must take the publicity that comes along.
Belfastas uncivilised as ever – savage black mothers in houses of dark red brick, friendly manufacturers too drunk to entertain you when you arrive. It amuses me till I get tired.
So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.
Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality both of the writer and of the recipient.
No man can be an agnostic who has a sense of humour.
The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme.
The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.
The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink.