"All the best stories are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape."

"I am sure it is one's duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this."

"Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene."

"As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow."

"Knowing what you can not do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, that's good taste."

"People seldom refuse help, if one offers it in the right way."

"One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do."

"I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction."

"Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping."

"Man, an animal that makes bargains."

"When you get to my age life seems little more than one long march to and from the lavatory."

"The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortunes, but its fears."