“The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.”

“All men are enemies. All animals are comrades”

“Her feelings were her own, and could not be altered from outside. It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.”

“Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain.”

“To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.”

“This blessèd plot, this earth, this realm, this EnglandThis nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,. . .This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land.”

“This England never did, nor never shall,Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,But when it first did help to wound itself.Now these her princes are come home again,Come the three corners of the world in arms,And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue,If England to itself do rest but true.”

“More than 80 per cent of the British casualties of the Great War were English. More than 80 per cent of the taxation is paid by the English taxpayers. We are entitled to mention these facts, and to draw authority and courage from them.”