You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society.

It is usual to speak in a playfully apologetic tone about one's adult enjoyment of what are called 'children's books.' I think the convention a silly one. No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty-except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all. A mature palate will probably not much care for crème de menthe: but it ought still to enjoy bread and butter and honey.

I am a product [...of] endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them.... I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass.

Evil can be undone, but it cannot 'develop' into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, 'with backward mutters of dissevering power' - or else not.

A noble hunger, long unsatisfied, met at last its proper food.

Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to believe in a certain way, and can't really get rid of it.

Well, you know how it feels if you begin hoping for something that you want desperately badly; you almost fight against the hope because it is too good to be true; you've been disappointed so often before.