Snobbishness, like hypocrisy, is a check upon behaviour whose value from a social point of view has been underrated.

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

I have no wish to take life, not even human life

So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.

The end was contained in the beginning.

Football, a game in which everyone gets hurt and every nation has its own style of play which seems unfair to foreigners.

Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.