Perhaps he does not want to be friends with you until he knows what you are like. With owls, it is never easy-come-easy-go.

There is one fairly good reason for fighting - and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a great wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop them.

It was called a tribute before a battle and a ransom afterwards.

Only fools want to be great.

The Victorians had not been anxious to go away for the weekend. The Edwardians, on the contrary, were nomadic.

She hardly ever thought of him. He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer.

I can imagine nothing more terrifying than an Eternity filled with men who were all the same. The only thing which has made life bearable…has been the diversity of creatures on the surface of the globe.