Your trousers are on fire. I would have told you, but you so dislike advice.

If you take a man by surprise, and behave with sufficient arrogance, he will generally do what you ask. -Emerson

But the dust! And the clutter! My housewifely and scholarly instincts were equally offended.

a church ought to express the joy of religion as well as its majesty.

In the silence I heard Bastet, who had retreated under the bed, carrying on a mumbling, profane monologue. (If you ask how I knew it was profane, I presume you have never owned a cat.)

The way to get on with a cat is to treat it as an equal - or even better, as the superior it knows itself to be.

The trouble with unknown enemies is that they are so difficult to identify.