We make a mistake forsaking England and moving out into the periphery of life. After all, Taormina, Ceylon, Africa, America -- as far as we go, they are only the negation of what we ourselves stand for and are: and we're rather like Jonahs running away from the place we belong.

We have to hate our immediate predecessors to get free of their authority.

Every civilization when it loses its inner vision and its cleaner energy, falls into a new sort of sordidness, more vast and more stupendous than the old savage sort. An Augean stable of metallic filth.

And what's romance? Usually, a nice little tale where you have everything As You Like It, where rain never wets your jacket and gnats never bite your nose and it's always daisy-time.

This is the very worst wickedness, that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us. This makes us secret and rotten.

I shall be glad when you have strangled the invincible respectability that dogs your steps.

God how I hate new countries: They are older than the old, more sophisticated, much more conceited, only young in a certain puerile vanity more like senility than anything.

We need not feel ashamed of flirting with the zodiac. The zodiac is well worth flirting with.

Tragedy is like strong acid -- it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.