We should live and learn; but by the time we've learned, it's too late to live.

I think, for the rest of my life, I shall refrain from looking up things. It is the most ravenous time-snatcher I know. You pull one book from the shelf, which carries a hint or a reference that sends you posthaste to another book, and that to successive others. It is incredible, the number of books you hopefully open and disappointedly close, only to take down another with the same result.

Patriotism covers a multitude of sins.

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.

A blunder at the right moment is better than cleverness at the wrong time.

Youth is a silly, vapid state, Old age with fears and ills is rife, This simple boon I beg of Fate - A thousand years of Middle Life.

... as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the ideal library is in the wish of its maker.