Of all the minor creatures of mythology, fairies are the most beautiful, the most numerous, the most memorable.

Among the various forms of science which are reaching and affecting the new popular tradition, we have reckoned Anthropology. Pleasantly enough, Anthropology has herself but recently emerged from that limbo of the unrecognised in which Psychical Research is pining.

Life's more amusing than we thought.

Young men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend “a course of reading.” Distrust a course of reading! People who really care for books read all of them. There is no other course.

An unsophisticated forecaster uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts - for support rather than for illumination.

A book is a friend whose face is constantly changing. If you read it when you are recovering from an illness, and return to it years after, it is changed surely, with the change in yourself.

Of all animals, the cat alone attains to the comtemplative life. He regards the wheel of existence from without, like the Buddha.