A critic is a gong at a railroad crossing clanging loudly and vainly as the train goes by.

Blessed is he who has never been tempted; for he knows not the frailty of his rectitude.

All students can learn.

Animal crackers, and cocoa to drink That is the finest of suppers, I think When I'm grown up and can have what I please, I think I shall always insist upon these.

Truth and Beauty (perhaps Keats was wrong in identifying them: perhaps they have the relation of Wit and Humour, or Rain and Rainbow) are of interest only to hungry people. There are several kinds of hunger. If Socrates, Spinoza, and Santayana had had free access to a midnight icebox we would never have heard of them. Shall I be ashamed of my little mewing truths?... I ask to be forgiven: they are such tiny ones.

We visit bookshops not so often to buy any one special book, but rather to rediscover, in the happier and more expressive words of others, our own encumbered soul.

When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.