Everybody remembers how he let slip the remark about The Rehearsal not having wit enough to keep it sweet
the spirit of an age may not only be reflected in its prose, it may be, indeed it is, to some extent conditioned by it
Invective is rare today, not that people are kinder, far from it, but that they are indifferent; possibly also, being less robust than our ancestors, we do not take invective in good part
Why does this happen? Why do people write forms which are dead, which they would never utter? … one is tempted to diagnose insincerity of thought, or at least mental laziness
good writers … do not think, as it was something of a fashion to do, that prose can make its impact solely as a kind of goods-train to convey facts or even ideas from one place to another
a whole civilization may be affected by the quality of its prose