“Light-heartedness always made Soames suspicious - there was generally some reason for it.”

“His natural taciturnity was in his favour; nothing could be more calculated to give people, especially people with property (Soames had no other clients), the impression that he was a safe man. And he was safe. [...] How could he fall, when his soul abhorred circumstances which render a fall possible - a man cannot fall off the floor!”

“To every man of great age - to Sir Wlater Bentham himself - the idea of suicide has once at least been present in the ante-room of his soul; on the threshold, waiting to enter, held out from the inmost chamber by some chance reality, some vague fear, some painful hope. The Man of Property, p. 363”

“Politics are popularly supposed to govern the direction, and statesmen to be the guardian angels, of Civilization. It seems to me that they have little or no power over its growth. They are of it, and move with it. Their concern is rather with the body than with the mind or soul of a nation. One needs not to be an engineer to know that to pull a man up a wall one must be higher than he; that to raise general taste one must have better taste than that of those whose taste he is raising.”

“I suppose that many think we live in a cheap and sensational age, all sky-signs and headlines; an age of advertisement and standardization. And yet, this is a more enlightened age than any human beings have lived in hitherto. For instance, practically all of us can read. Some of you may say: ‘Ah! But what? Detective stories, scandals, and the sporting news.’ No doubt, compared with Sunday newspapers and mystery stories, the Oedipus, Hamlet and Faust are very small beer. All the same, the number of volumes issued each year continually gains on the number of the population in all Western countries. Every phase and question of life is brought more and more into the limelight. Theatres, cinemas, the radio, and even lectures, assist the process. But they do not, and should not replace reading, because when we are just watching and listening, somebody is taking very good care that we should not stop and think. The danger in this age is not of our remaining ignorant; it is that we should lose the power of thinking for ourselves. Problems are more and more put before us, but, except to crossword puzzles and detective mysteries, do we attempt to find the answers for ourselves? Less and less. The short cut seems ever more and more desirable. But the short cut to knowledge is nearly always the longest way round. There is nothing like knowledge, picked up by or reasoned out for oneself.”

“Some fifteen years ago in London there was an exhibition of the works of a certain sculptor, which contained many sane and admirable pieces. Two young ladies came in one day, and flitted from flower to flower with dissatisfied air, till at last one of them caught sight of a vast seated assemblage of elliptical rhomboids which was wooing the Public under the name of Venus. Before this supreme novelty she halted, if a butterfly can halt. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she said, ‘here she is! Here’s the Venus!’ And putting her head on one side, she added: ‘Isn’t she a pet?’ Such butterflies still exist and halt before the works of novelty for novelty’s sake, because they are told to by some town-crier, who must have novelty at any cost.”

“In his eyes, as in the eyes of all Forsytes, the pleasure of seeing these beautiful creatures in a state of captivity far outweighed the inconvenience of imprisonment to beasts whom God had so improvidently placed in a state of freedom! It was for the animals' good, removing them at once from the countless dangers of open air and exercise. Indeed, it was doubtful what wild animals were made for but tobe shut up in cages! The Man of Property, p. 191”