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

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.

Constructive destruction is one of the most delightful employments in the world, and in civilized life the opportunities for it are only too rare.

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.

And I am a mockery, who was God before.

to achieve unity without uniformity is the whole essence of the democratic way of life.

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