45 quotes
In spite of recent jazzed-up one-day matches, cricket to be fully appreciated demands leisure, some sunny warm days and an understanding of its finer points.
The English (1973)
A man can afford to let himself go in a hen-house.
The Good Companions (1929)
Much of writing might be described as mental pregnancy with successive difficult deliveries.
The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.
It is hard to tell where the MCC ends and the Church of England begins.
Your mother knows no more about organization than a — a prize rabbit.
Angel Pavement (1930)
Living in age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch.
Fifty years ago I seemed to myself older than other people assumed me to be; now I seem younger.
Man and Time (1964)
Depending upon shock tactics is easy, whereas writing a good play is difficult. Pubic hair is no substitute for wit.
Outcries and Asides (1974)
I can't help feeling wary when I hear anything said about the masses. First you take their faces from 'em by calling 'em the masses and then you accuse 'em of not having any faces.
Saturn Over the Water (1961)
In spite of its size and range, this is […] a personal essay. It is a Time-haunted man addressing himself chiefly to all those people he knows from experience to be also Time-haunted.
Man and Time (1964)
It should be realised that men will take enormous risks rather than be bored. War has been used before now to prevent a bored populace from getting into mischief, at the expense of its rulers.
To say that these men paid their shilling to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink.
The Good Companions (1929)
I am not an atheist, but I cannot agree with men who talk about God as if He had once attended a Speech Day at their theological college.
Man and Time (1964)
Those no-sooner-have-I-touched-the-pillow people are past my comprehension. There is something suspiciously bovine about them.
God can stand being told by Professor Ayer and Marghanita Laski that He does not exist.
I […] thoroughly detest [novels that] fasten on to some historical figure, offering me bogus biography, an unpleasant mixture of fact and fiction.
Man and Time (1964)
She seemed to have had a sudden terrible glimpse of life as it really was, and was ready to weep at the thought of its strange dusty littleness.
The Good Companions (1929)
We know only too well that there are times when everything goes wrong, but, in our haste to make the worst of life, we are apt to forget that there are also times when everything goes right.
Faraway (1932)
I have lived longer than you. I have thought more, and I have suffered more. And I tell you there is more truth to the fundamental nature of things in the most foolish fairy tales than there is in any of your complaints against life.