Words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity.

Beavers bred in captivity, inhabiting a concrete pool, will, if given the timber, fatuously go through all the motions of damming an ancestral stream.

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

She had heard someone say something about an Independent Labour Party, and was furious that she had not been asked.

I'm quite deaf now; such a comfort.

If one's object is ascetic, it is far better to stay in London or Paris or New York; there is practically no extreme of heat or cold, physical risk, loneliness, hunger or thirst that cannot, with a little ingenuity, be conveniently achieved in the centres of civilization.

There is a species of person called a 'Modern Churchman' who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief.