It might be marvelous to be a man - then I could stop worrying about what's fair to women and just cheerfully assume I was superior, and that they had all been born to iron my shirts. Better still, I could be an Irish man - then I would have all the privileges of being male without giving up the right to be wayward, temperamental and an appealing minority.

I blame Rousseau, myself. "Man is born free", indeed. Man is not born free, he is born attached to his mother by a cord and is not capable of looking after himself for at least seven years (seventy in some cases).

American patriotism is generally something that amuses Europeans, I suppose because children look idiotic saluting the flag and because the constitution contains so many cracks through which the lawyers may creep.

The case against censoring anything is absolute: ... nothing that could be censored can be so bad in its effects, in the long run, as censorship itself.

Spring makes everything look filthy.

The wind of change, whatever it is, blows most freely through an open mind.

I suppose we all share this pipe-dream of being able to reach out a hand and find anything at will; what is amazing is that we think that good filing could somehow make it comes true. On the contrary: putting a letter into a filing system is like releasing your ferret in the Hampton Court maze.