He had the appeal of a very young dog of a very large breed -- a kind of amiable absurdity.

Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of comfortable horrors within. The heavier the lashing of the rain and the ghastlier the details, the better the flavour seems to be.

However entrancing it is to wander unchecked through a garden of bright images, are we not enticing your mind from another subject of almost equal importance?

Oh, well, faint heart never won so much as a scrap of paper

[N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I don't care what the story is about or what may be the momentary craze for books that appear to have been hammered out by the village blacksmith in a state of intoxication; the minute you get the easy touch of the real craftsman with centuries of civilisation behind him, you get literature.

What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.

There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood.