Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room.

The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.

As we grow older, the memories of early life brighten, those of maturity and senescence grow dim and confused.

Bath twice a day to be really clean, once a day to be passably clean, once a week to avoid being a public menace.

It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? Deep and hard questions, little 6655321.

Elgar is not manic enough to be Russian, not witty or pointilliste enough to be French, not harmonically simple enough to be Italian and not stodgy enough to be German. We arrive at his Englishry by pure elimination.

What critics often ask for is the impossible, though this may be a salutary means of extending the borders of art.