My children weary me. I can only see them as defective adults: feckless, destructive, frivolous, sensual, humorless.

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

His courtesy was somewhat extravagant. He would write and thank people who wrote to thank him for wedding presents and when he encountered anyone as punctilious as himself the correspondence ended only with death.

One has to regard a man as a Master who can produce on average three uniquely brilliant and entirely original similes to every page.

Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher

Never get mixed up in a Welsh wrangle. It doesn't end in blows like an Irish one, but goes on forever.

After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can't trust a person.