Anthology construction is one of the pleasantest hobbies that a person who is not mad about golf and bridge - that is to say, a thinking person - can possibly have

Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.

Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.

Nearly all bookish people are snobs, and especially the more enlightened among them. They are apt to assume that if a writer has immense circulation, if he is enjoyed by plain persons, and if he can fill several theatres at once, he cannont possibly be worth reading and merits only indifference and disdain.

You can only acquire really useful general ideas by first acquiring particular ideas . . . You cannot make bricks without straw.

Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like