Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days - such as that day - when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour.

The only thing that it is advisable to know in any language is the numerals; and even there, you can do a lot with the fingers.

The great charm in argument is really finding one's own opinions, not other people's.

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.

There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.

I regard writing not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed.

Not everyone grows to be old, but everyone has been younger than he is now.