Of two evils choose the prettier.

how could advice be successful? If it turns out right, the adviser is ignored and the advisee takes all the credit. If it proves mistaken, the adviser receives all the blame.

Insistent advice may develop into interference, and interference, someone has said, is the hind hoof of the devil.

... the subjective viewpoint is the only one to use regarding a library. Your true library is a collection of the books you want.You may have deplorably poor taste or bad judgment. Never mind. Correct those traits before you exchange your books.

I don't care very much for literary shrines and hauntsI knew a woman in London who boasted that she had lodgings from the windows of which she could throw a stone into Carlyle's yard. And when I said, "Why throw a stone into Carlyle's yard?" she looked at me as if I were an imbecile and changed the subject.

A guilty conscience is the mother of invention.

All through the nineties I met people. Crowds of people. Met and met and met, until it seemed that people were born and hastily grew up, just to be met.