There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.

To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift. Splendid, because it ornaments a man's speech with other men's jewels; dangerous, for the same reason.

I still have trouble identifying grammatical structures by name, though I know them as matters of usage.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.

Did you know that Puritanism went hand in hand with dirt, that Oliver Cromwell put a 100 per cent tax on soap and that the repeal of the soap tax was one of the most popular acts of Charles II at his Restoration?

Never harbor grudges; they sour your stomach and do no harm to anyone else.

I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind... At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.