Good general-purpose manners nowadays may be said to consist in knowing how much you can get away with.

the slight sense of degeneracy induced by reading novels before luncheon

There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.

the process of reading is reciprocal; the book is no more than a formula, to be furnished out with images out of the reader's mind.

Raids are slightly constipating.

Each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant; impossible socially, but full scale; and it's the knockings and battering we sometimes hear in each other that keep our banter from utter banality.

Convention was our safeguard: could one have stronger?