Nature has decreed that for what men suffer by having to shave, be killed in battle, and eat the legs of chickens, women make amends by housekeeping, childbirth, and writing all the letters for both of them.

To visit a new country for the first time is great fun; but it is even greater fun to introduce somebody else to a country that you know.

There was one bursting now, a delicate constellation of many-coloured stars which drifted down and lingered in the still air.... The final rocket went up, a really large one, a piece of reckless extravagance. Its sibilant uprush was impressive, dragonlike; it soared twice as high as any they had had before.... The sparks from the rocket came pouring down the sky in a slow golden cascade, vanishing one by one into a lake of darkness.

Things happen too quickly, crisis follows crisis, the soil of our minds is perpetually disturbed. Each of us, to relieve his feelings, broadcasts his own running commentary on the preposterous and bewildering events of the hour: and this, nowadays, is what passes for conversation.

In childhood the daylight always fails too soon - except when there are going to be fireworks.

librarianship is one of the few callings in the world for which is it still possible to feel unqualified admiration and respect.

how much of the fun of parenthood lay in watching the children remake, with delighted wonder, one's own discoveries.