The great and recurrent question about Abroad is, is it worth the trouble of getting there?

To be prejudiced is the privilege of the thinking human being. ... The open mind is the empty mind.

Publishers of course have you altogether in their grip; if they say you must do a thing you have jolly well got to do it.

It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.

[Religion is a] primitive insurance against disaster. ... Originally religion was merely a function of the self-preservative instinct. Offer sacrifices to the gods and save your crops. And even Christianity, after all, insures heavily against the flaws in this life by belief in another.

Work is a dull thing; you cannot get away from that. The only agreeable existence is one of idleness, and that is not, unfortunately, always compatible with continuing to exist at all.

It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.