"This desire to govern a woman -- it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together.... But I do love you surely in a better way then he does." He thought. "Yes -- really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms."

"Italy and London are the only places where I don't feel to exist on sufferance."

"Miss Abbott, don't worry over me. Some people are born not to do things. I'm one of them."

"A matter neither sensual nor sensational is ignored by the art of today."

"Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice."

"The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot."

"Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due - she reminds us too much of a prima donna."

"What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote."

"Vashti was seized with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into the room, and the wall closed up again."

"Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon."

"I am so used to seeing the sort of play which deals with one man and two women. They do not leave me with the feeling I have made a full theatrical meal they do not give me the experience of the multiplicity of life."

"My father says that there is only one perfect view - the view of the sky straight over our heads, and that all these views on earth are but bungled copies of it."

"I rather mistrust young men who slip into life gracefully."

"Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it."

"A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself."

"The Machine stops.""What do you say?""The Machine is stopping, I know it, I know the signs."She burst into a peal of laugher."

"History develops, art stands still."

"I can only do what's easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can't, and won't, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who's strong enough to boss me or whom I'm strong enough to boss. So I shan't ever marry, for there aren't such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say 'Jack Robinson."

"How can the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they build are only retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home. India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world's trouble, to its uttermost depth. She calls "Come" through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She is not a promise, only an appeal."

"The past is devoid of meaning like the present, and a refuge for cowards."

"Most of the inhabitants of India do not mind how India is governed. Nor are the lower animals of England concerned about England, but in the tropics the indifference is more prominent, the inarticulate world is closer at hand and readier to resume control as soon as men are tired."

"I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves."

"An efficiency-regime cannot be run without a few heroes stuck about it to carry off the dullness - much as plums have to be put into a bad pudding to make it palatable."

"One marvels why the middle classes still insist on so much discomfort for their children at such expense to themselves."

"The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul."

"They had nothing in common but the English language, and tried by its help to express what neither of them understood."

"A slow nature such as Maurice's appears insensitive, for it needs time even to feel. Its instinct is to assume that nothing either for good or evil has happened, and to resist the invader. Once gripped, it feels acutely, and its sensations in love are particularly profound. Given time, it can know and impart ecstasy; given time, it can sink to the heart of Hell."

"As for her hair, or rather hairs, they are too complicated to describe, but one system went down her back, lying in a thick pad there, while another, created for a lighter destiny, rippled around her forehead."

"I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows."

"The issues Miss Quested had raised were so much more important than she was herself that people inevitably forgot her."

"I was brought up to be honest; the trouble is it gets me nowhere." Liking her better, he smiled and said, "It'll get us to heaven." "Will it?" "If heaven existed." "Do you not believe in heaven, Mr. Fielding, may I ask?" she said, looking at him shyly. "I do not. Yet I believe that honesty gets us there."

"He was not sure, but liked it. It recurred when they met suddenly or had been silent. It beckoned to him across intellect, saying, "This is all very well, you're clever, we know-but come!" It haunted him so that he watched for it while his brain and tongue were busy, and when it came he felt himself replying, "I'll come-I didn't know.""You can't help yourself now. You must come.""I don't want to help myself.""Come then."He did come. He flung down all the barriers-not at once, for he did not live in a house that can be destroyed in a day."

"She stopped and leant her elbows against the parapet of the embankment. He did likewise. There is at times a magic in identity of position, it is one of the things that have suggested to us eternal comradeship."

"Our life on earth is and ought to be material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly they are still entangled with the desire for ownership."

"I since cricket match do long to talk with one of my arms around you, then place both arms round you and share with you, the above now seems sweeter to me than words can say."

"And someone he scarcely knew moved towards him and knelt beside him and whispered, 'Sir, was you calling out for me? Sir, I know I know,' and touched him."

"Travel was a species of warfare."

"While her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to invite him to tea."

"To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way."

"It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more timid among us."

"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."

"Fed by neither Heaven nor by Earth he was going forward . . . He hadn't a God or a lover--the two usual incentives to virtue. But on he struggled with his back to ease, because dignity demanded it. There was no one to watch him, nor did he watch himself, but struggles like his are the supreme achievements of humanity, and surpass any legends about Heavan."

"Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life."

"The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty."

"Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him."

"It is the starved imagination, not the well-nourished, that is afraid."