“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”

A drunken man is happier than a sober one.

Never lose a chance: it doesn’t come every day.

Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

What you are to do without me I cannot imagine.

When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

After all, the wrong road always leads somewhere.

The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.

Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery – it’s the sincerest form of learning.

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

Animals are my friends and I don’t eat my friends.

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.

If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you’ll find you’ve done it.

Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.

Some men are more interesting than their books but my book is more interesting than its man.

Do not ever read books about versification: no poet ever learnt it that way. If you are going to be a poet, it will come to you naturally and you will pick up all you need from reading poetry.

I revise the manuscript till I can’t read it any longer, then I get somebody to type it. Then I revise the typing. Then it’s retyped again. Then there’s a third typing, which is the final one. Nothing should then remain that offends the eye.

There is no book so bad that some good can not be got out of it.

A diary need not be a dreary chronicle of one’s movements; it should aim rather at giving salient account of some particular episode, a walk, a book, a conversation.

To whom do I give my new elegant little book? Cui dono lepidum novum libellum?

A book in a man’s brain is better off than a book bound in calf – at any rate it is safer from criticism.