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.

She saw every personal religion as a pair of intersecting circles. . . . Probably perfection is reached when the area of the two outer crescents, added together, is exactly equal to that of the leaf-shaped piece in the middle. On paper there must be some neat mathematical formula for arriving at this; in life, none.

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

The importance of the ordinary citizen is very greatly underestimated - not so much by those in authority as by the ordinary citizen himself.

It oughtn't to need a war to make us talk to each other in buses, and invent our own amusements in the evenings, and live simply, and eat sparingly, and recover the use of our legs, and get up early enough to see the sun rise.

One is what one remembers: no more, no less.

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.