We were not making war against Germany, we were being ordered about in the King's war with Germany.

The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.

I had just taken to reading. I had just discovered the art of leaving my body to sit impassive in a crumpled up attitude in a chair or sofa, while I wandered over the hills and far away in novel company and new scenes... My world began to expand very rapidly,... the reading habit had got me securely.

Biologists can be just as sensitive to heresy as theologians.

Better it is toward the right conduct of life to consider what will be the end of a thing, than what is the beginning of it: for what promises fair at first may prove ill, and what seems at first a disadvantage, may prove very advantageous.

I want to go ahead of Father Time with a scythe of my own.

Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.