Always be nice to everyone in the firm on the way up. You never know who you may meet on the way down.

Never drink black coffee at lunch; it will keep you awake all afternoon.

I think we ought to have a kindness year, or a kindness century.

The male - I have found - is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be trained to do most things.

The letter of application ... should be a masterpiece of fiction, papering over all the cracks. Get it properly typed on decent writing paper. Never let it run over the page, people get bored with reading.

it's a good idea to wait a few months before joining anything when you arrive at a village. A bookseller friend who retired to nearby Oxfordshire, and was worried he might be bored, got himself on to every village committee in the first six months, and spent the next ten years extricating himself.

People always assume that bachelors are single by choice and spinsters because nobody asked them. It never enters their heads that poor bachelors might have worn the knees of their trousers out proposing to girls who rejected them or that a girl might deliberately stay unmarried.