When it comes to analysing the pleasures of life, the privilege of approving and disapproving in conversation must be ranked very high, and reading a… - E. V. Lucas

After my experiences I know that it is not the disposal of books that presents the greatest difficulty to a bookseller, but the acquisition of them.

Have misfortune and disease and frustration and insecurity been necessary to man's ingenuity and industry? Without sorrow should we have had no telegraph? without tears, no camera? Have all the benefits of civilisation been wrung from us in some effort to escape from the blows of fate? And even if so, might not happiness, without the advantages of progress, have still been better?

I bade farewell to the May stars, and did one of the most adventurous things left to us — I went to bed. For no one can lay a hand on our dreams. All the authors of the world cannot spoil those.