"Children, don't speak so coarsely," said Mr Webster, who had a vague notion that some supervision should be exercised over his daughters' speech, and that a line should be drawn, but never knew quite when to draw it. He had allowed his daughters to use his library without restraint, and nothing is more fatal to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library.

Everything matters. The Universe is approximately fifteen billion years old, and I swear that in all that time, nothing has ever happened that has not mattered, has not contributed in some way to the totality.

The clerisy are those who seek, and find, delight and enlargement of life in books. The clerisy are those for whom reading is a personal art.

You're all mad for words. Words are just farts from a lot of fools who have swallowed too many books. Give me things!

"Children, don't speak so coarsely," said Mr Webster, who had a vague notion that some supervision should be exercised over his daughters' speech, and that a line should be drawn, but never knew quite when to draw it. He had allowed his daughters to use his library without restraint, and nothing is more fatal to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library.

Nothing grows old-fashioned so fast as modernity.

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?