Giving a party is like having a baby: its conception is more fun than its completion; and once you have begun it, it is almost impossible to stop.

[Gardening] is a means by which you can attain many valuable hours of solitude without being thought unsociable.

It took me forty years on earth To reach this sure conclusion: There is no Heaven but clarity, No Hell except confusion.

To be put down in this world, and given only eighty years to get to know it in, is like being let loose in the United States of America for the first time with a high-powered car and unlimited gasoline - but with a visa that is valid for only a week. It's agonizing, that's what it is.

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.

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

Words were the only net to catch a mood, the only sure weapon against oblivion.