[On the British Museum:] It was manifestly impossible to read all the books in that huge, gloomy structure, but I made a good try and accumulated a fund of useless information guaranteed to cast a pall over any dinner table.

Serve the dinner backward, do anything - but for goodness sake, do something weird.

Intolerance of mediocrity has been the main prop of my independence.

Only those who have earned leisure know how to use it profitably.

don't try for wit. Settle for humor. You'll last longer.

People who have escaped from poverty are like old soldiers. In later years they recount the little, amusing incidents that happened infrequently, and conveniently forget the long, unrelieved stretches of misery and boredom.

Someone has said that life itself is a party: you join after it's started and you leave before it's finished.