Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.

If you hunch your shoulders too long against a storm your shoulders will grow bowed.

They were simple, earnest people, those early Victorians, and had not yet learnt the trick of avoiding disturbing thoughts and sights.

Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.

It is not merely that people must die and people must suffer, if not here, then there. But what is dreadful is that the world goes on and people go on being stupidly cruel - in the old ways and all the time.

The instances of honesty that one comes across in this world are just as amazing as the instances of dishonesty. After forty-five years of mixing with one's kind, one ought to have acquired the habit of being able to know something about one's fellow beings. But one doesn't

But responsibility hardens the heart. It must.