Every Englishman abroad, until it is proved to the contrary, likes to consider himself a traveller and not a tourist.

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

I'm quite deaf now; such a comfort.

Its theme-- the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters-- was perhaps presumptuously large, but I make no apology for it.

We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them...

Of the many smells of Athens two seem to me the most characteristic - that of garlic, bold and deadly like acetylene gas. and that of dust, soft and warm and caressing like tweed.

...she had regained what I thought she had lost forever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, "Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?