But it is impossible, I find, to tidy books without ending by sitting on the floor in the middle of a great untidiness and reading.

Strange that the vanity which accompanies beauty - excusable, perhaps, when there is such great beauty, or at any rate understandable - should persist after the beauty is gone.

Books have their idiosyncrasies as well as people, and will not show me their full beauties unless the place and time in which they are read suits them.

If one believed in angels one would feel that they must love us best when we are asleep and cannot hurt each other; and what a mercy it is that once in every twenty-four hours we are too utterly weary to go on being unkind.

When I got to the library I came to a standstill, - ah, the dear room, what happy times I have spent in it rummaging amongst the books, making plans for my garden, building castles in the air, writing, dreaming, doing nothing.

... Why, it would really be being unselfish to go away and be happy for a little, because we would come back so much nicer.

What a blessing it is to love books.