The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the secret that most of your friends have lost.

... even in houses commonly held to be 'booky' one finds, nine times out of ten, not a library but a book-dump.

It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country.

Charity, till then, had been conscious only of a vague self-disgust and a frightening physical distress; now, of a sudden, there came to her the grave surprise of motherhood.

It was amusement enough to be with a group of fearless and talkative girls, who said new things in a new language, who were ignorant of tradition and unimpressed by distinctions of rank; but it was soon clear that their young hostesses must be treated with the same respect, if not with the same ceremony as English girls of good family.

What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.

The true felicity of a lover of books is the luxurious turning of page by page, the surrender, not meanly abject, but deliberate and cautious, with your wits about you, as you deliver yourself into the keeping of the book. This I call reading.