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.

We ought to recognise the profound gulf between the work to which we are 'called' and the work we are forced into as a means of livelihood.

The English language has a deceptive air of simplicity; so have some little frocks; but they are both not the kind of thing you can run up in half an hour with a machine.

[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account.

What? Sunday morning in an English family and no sausages? God bless my soul, what's the world coming to, eh?

She always says, my lord, that facts are like cows. If you look them in the face hard enough they generally run away.

Learning and literature have a way of outlasting the civilization that made them.