you can give it a long name if you like, but I'm an old-fashioned woman and I call it mother-wit, and it's so rare for a man to have it that if he does you write a book about him and call him Sherlock Holmes.

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.

I have never yet heard any middle-aged man or woman who worked with his or her brains express any regret for the passing of youth.

I can't think why fancy religions should have such a ghastly effect on one's grammar. It's a kind of intellectual rot that sets in, I'm afraid.

How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

A passage is not plain English - still less is it good English - if we are obliged to read it twice to find out what it means.

The doctrine of hell is not "mediaeval priestcraft" for frightening people into giving money to the church: it is Christ's deliberate judgment on sin.... We cannot repudiate hell without altogether repudiating Christ.