The first beginnings of wisdom...is to ask questions but never to answer any.

The only result my father got for his money was the certainty that his son had laid faultlessly the foundation of a system of heavy drinking and could be always relied upon to make a break of at least twenty-five even with a bad cue.

Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. I reflected on the subject of my spare-time literary activities. One Beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings.

The dusk was performing its customary intransitive operation of "gathering".

Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.

Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed to those who seek the higher places.

Waiting for the German verb is surely the ultimate thrill.