Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes.

Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes.

Western man is schizophrenic.

We cannot get grace from gadgets.

To put failure behind you, face up to it.

We pay when old for the excesses of youth.

To multiply your joy, count your blessings.

To make the most of Christmas, focus on Christ.

The point is to be good-to be sensitive and sincere.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other.

What a grand, higgledy-piggledy, sensible old place Norwich is!

Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.

To love to teach is one thing, to love those you teach is another.

Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people.

Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned.

It is hard to tell where the MCC ends and the Church of England begins.

Like its politicians and its war, society has the teenagers it deserves.

To resent and remember brings strife; to forgive and forget brings peace.

Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.

The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.

She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.

Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.

Accidents, try to change them - it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.

The greatest writers of this age... are aware of the mystery of our existence.

A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.

Childhood, catching our imagination when it is fresh and tender, never lets go of us.

One of the delights known to age, and beyond the grasp of youth, is that of Not Going.

We must beware the revenge of the starved senses, the embittered animal in its prison.

There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent.

It is good fiction, so largely ignored now, that brings us so much closer to the real facts.

Much of writing might be described as mental pregnancy with successive difficult deliveries.

A loving wife will do anything for her husband except stop criticizing him and trying to improve him.

The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write.

To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own - this is happiness.

I know only two words of American slang, 'swell' and 'lousy'. I think 'swell' is lousy, but 'lousy' is swell.

I fancy that the Hell of Too Many People would occupy a respectable place in the hierarchy of infernal regions.

Those no-sooner-have-I-touched-the-pillow people are past my comprehension. There is something bovine about them.

Depending upon shock tactics is easy, whereas writing a good play is difficult. Pubic hair is no substitute for wit.

Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.

Write as often as possible, not with the idea at once of getting into print, but as if you were learning an instrument.

Many a man is praised for his reserve and so-called shyness when he is simply too proud to risk making a fool of himself.

There was no respect for youth when I was young, and now that I am old, there is no respect for age, I missed it coming and going.

If we openly declare what is wrong with us, what is our deepest need, then perhaps the death and despair will by degrees disappear.

Sometimes you might think the machines we worship make all the chief appointments, promoting the human beings who seem closest to them.

Our dourest parsons, who followed the nonconformist fashion of long extemporary prayers, always seemed to me to be bent on bullying God.

In a matriarchy men should be encouraged to take it easy, for most women prefer live husbands to blocks of shares and seats on the board.

Our trouble is that we drink too much tea. I see in this the slow revenge of the Orient, which has diverted the Yellow River down our throats.

If there is one thing left that I would like to do, it's to write something really beautiful. And I could do it, you know. I could still do it.

In a world shaped and colored more and more by politicians, the nations meet politically, and hardly any other way to settle their differences.

Any fool can be fussy and rid himself of energy all over the place, but a man has to have something in him before he can settle down to do nothing.

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