if you have once thoroughly bored somebody it is next to impossible to unbore him.

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

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.

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.

It is beautiful, beautiful to give; one of the very most beautiful things in life.

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.

What a blessing it is to love books.