For when you looked into my mother's eyes you knew, as if He had told you, why God sent her into the world - it was to open then minds of all who looked to beautiful thoughts. And that is the beginning and end of literature.

Growing up is such a barbarous business, full of inconvenience... and pimples.

I am not young enough to know everything.

Girls are much too clever to fall out of their prams

You [Scots] come of a race of men the very wind of whose name has swept to the ultimate seas.

Forever is a very long time Peter

I know, I feel, that with the introduction of tobacco England woke up from a long sleep. Suddenly a new zest had been given to life. The glory of existence became a thing to speak of. Men who had hitherto only concerned themselves with the narrow things of home put a pipe into their mouths and became philosophers.