To see Stephen Spender fumbling with our rich and delicate language is to experience all the horror of seeing a Sevres vase in the hands of a chimpanzee.

It is no longer possible to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it is based.

Beware of writing to me. I always answer ... My father spent the last 20 years of his life writing letters. If someone thanked him for a wedding present, he thanked them for thanking him and there was no end to the exchange but death.

The tourist debauches the great monuments of antiquity, a comic figure, always inapt in his comments, incongruous in his appearance; ...avarice and deceit attack him at every step; the shops that he patronizes are full of forgeries... But we need feel no scruple or twinge of uncertainty; 'we' are travelers and cosmopolitans; the tourist is the other fellow.

To understand all is to forgive all.

At first it was impressive, but after half and hour deadly monotonous. It was like everything German - overdone.

I think it's one of the kindest things you can do to the very wicked, to give them time to repent.