The splendid thing about education is that everyone wants it. Like influenza, you can give it away without losing any of it yourself.

Medical science has oppressed us with a new huge burden of longevity. It is in that last undesired decade, when passion is cold, appetites feeble, curiosity dulled and experience has begotten cynicism, that accidia lies in wait as the final temptation to destruction.

Other nations use 'force' we Britons alone use 'Might'.

That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.

It is easy, retrospectively, to endow one's youth with a false precocity or a false innocence; to tamper with the dates marking one's stature on the edge of the door.

My father and I were never intimate in the sense of my coming to him with confidences or seeking advice. Our relationship was rather that of host and guest. Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.

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