American business, while it does not frown on helping the human race, frowns on people who start right in helping the human race without first proving that they can sell things to it.

Not being one to calculate or look ahead, I had not stopped to think, when boys started paying attention to me, that the cup might be dashed from my lips, though experience should have taught me that dashing cups from lips was the way Victorian parents got most of their exercise.

it is a waste of time to ask more of people than they have to give.

Americans (I, I'm afraid, among them) go around carelessly assuming they're tolerant the way they go around carelessly saying, 'You ought to be in pictures.' But in the clinches, they turn out to be tolerant about as often as they turn out to be Clark Gable.

... it takes a great deal to produce ennui in an Englishman and if you do, he only takes it as convincing proof that you are well-bred.

From a purely tourist standpoint, Oxford is overpowering, being so replete with architecture and history and anecdote that the visitor's mind feels dribbling and helpless, as with an over-large mouthful of nougat.

The people who say you are not facing reality actually mean that you are not facing their idea of reality