"Well," I said, "I'm sorry if cheerfulness is so impracticable. It would be new, at any rate, and novelty is said to be a great thing." </br> "Not in… - E. V. Lucas

I don't want to give it to you, so please take it quickly and hide it, or I shall ask for it back. It is a very sordid feeling, I admit; but if you also had the collector's temperament you would know that to give away anything is nearly an impossibility, and to give away anything without regretting it is quite an impossibility.

I had thought of a second-hand bookshop as being off the main stream of human frailty and temptation; and behold it was the resort of the most abandoned! Is there no natural honesty? I wished that Mr. Bemerton would return and liberate me to walk upstairs out of life again and get on with my make-believe.

Not the least remarkable thing in this wonderful world in which we grope and have our being, is the amazing differences that can exist in the children of the same parents.