We class schools into four grades: leading school, first-rate school, good school and school.
Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.
An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.
The truth is that Oxford is simply a very beautiful city in which it is convenient to segregate a certain number of the young of the nation while they are growing up.
Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.
When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them.
It doesn’t matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pie and eat you up.
We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them.
Where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans of the storm?
There’s only one great evil in the world today. Despair.
I have lived carefully, sheltered myself from the cold winds, eaten moderately of what was in season, drunk fine claret, slept in my own sheets; I shall live long.
There is an Easter sense in which all things are made new in the risen Christ. A tiny gleam of this is reflected in all true art.
A work of art is not a matter of thinking beautiful thoughts or experiencing tender emotions, but of intelligence, skill, taste, proportion, knowledge, discipline and industry; especially discipline.
That’s the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.
She had heard someone say something about an Independent Labour Party, and was furious that she had not been asked.
Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.
Of the many smells of Athens two seem to me the most characteristic – that of garlic, bold and deadly like acetylene gas. and that of dust, soft and warm and caressing like tweed.
Wine is a bride who brings a great dowry to the man who woos her persistently and gracefully.
Don’t hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.
One can write, think and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric.