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

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.

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

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

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

I can't abide cats myself, but of course we have to have one in the kitchen to deal with the mice. I insisted on getting a black one, because anything else shows the dirt so in London.

Punctuality is the thief of adventure.