A wicked generation seeketh ever some new thing and the publishers must publish and the bookseller must book-sell in order to live. (p. 56) - William Darling

I am an unrepentant book lover, and so soaked am I in the love of books that I feel – poor twentieth-century shopkeeper that I am – I feel that Pliny is a man I know, for all the eighteen centuries and more that lie between us. Pliny used to say (you will see it in a translation I have on my shelves) that no book was so bad that some good might be got out of it, and that is my feeling. I – and Pliny – born and bred so differently, feel the same about books and it gives me a flattering sense of rightness – sitting here in this shop among books that Pliny could not have imagined – books written in a language which was not then evolved – the thought makes me feel thrilled. There is no other word for it, but I dare not tell it to anyone. It is an astonishing secret to me that I must enjoy alone. (p. 30)

The world is so full of wonderful things that at this stage in its history there would seem to be no justification for aught else than that we should just wonder and give thanks. (p. 231)

War is not horrible all the time, as pacifists seem to believe. There are compensations for everything, and there is compensation in comradeship, intimacy, freedom from economic anxiety, the knowledge that once one's mind is adjusted to the worst that can happen – and that is a pretty bad and bloody wound or swift and sudden death – one settled down to existence as an Infantryman. Man is an adaptable animal – I acknowledge that myself. I adapted myself more easily to the environment of the trenches with its lice, filth, heat, stench, flies, dysentery, danger – I adapted myself to these more successfully, I repeat, than I have been able to adapt myself to this life as a shopkeeper. (p. 239)