It is unfair to blame man too fiercely for being pugnacious; he learned the habit from Nature.

One of the penalties of being a human being is other human beings.

All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful: but the beauty is grim.

Happiness is surely the best teacher of good manners: only the unhappy are churlish in deportment.

A man who has never made a woman angry is a failure in life.

Continually one faces the horrible matter of making decisions. The solution is, as far as possible, to avoid conscious rational decisions and choices; simply to do what you find yourself doing; to float in the great current of life with as little friction as possible; to allow things to settle themselves, as indeed they do with the most infallible certainty.

I wish there could be an international peace conference of booksellers, for (you will smile at this) my own conviction is that the future happiness of the world depends in no small measure on them and on the librarians.