I think to be oversensitive about cliches is like being oversensitive about table manners.

We schoolmasters must temper discretion with deceit.

The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.

News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead.

Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.

There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.

I think to be oversensitive about cliches is like being oversensitive about table manners.

There is a species of person called a 'Modern Churchman' who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief.

One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

Don't hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.

If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.

Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.

We class schools into four grades: leading school, first-rate school, good school and school.

All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day.

Money is only useful when you get rid of it. It is like the odd card in "Old Maid"; the player who is finally left with it has lost.

My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. Now I despise all my seven children equally.

Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.

Your actions, and your action alone, determines your worth.

Not everyone grows to be old, but everyone has been younger than he is now.

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

Pray always for all the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom.

You never find an Englishman among the under-dogs except in England, of course.

It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

In the dying world I come from, quotation is a national vice.

I haven't been to sleep for over a year. That's why I go to bed early. One needs more rest if one doesn't sleep.

The truth is that Oxford is simply a very beautiful city in which it is convenient to segregate a certain number of the young of the nation while they are growing up.

I put the words down and push them a bit.

Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.

We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them.

Other nations use 'force'; we Britons alone use 'Might'.

When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them.

Professional reviewers read so many bad books in the course of duty that they get an unhealthy craving for arresting phrases.

He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.

What is youth except a man or woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?

Money is only useful when you get rid of it. It is like the odd card in 'Old Maid'; the player who is finally left with it has lost.

I havent been to sleep for over a year. Thats why I go to bed early. One needs more rest if one doesnt sleep.

When we argue for our limitations we get to keep them.

You never find an Englishman among the under dogs except England of course.

Change is the only evidence of life.

For in that city New York there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.

We possess nothing certainly except the past.

Punctuality is the art of guessing how late the other fellow is going to be.

If it could only be like this always always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe

If it could only be like this always - always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper

The splendid thing about education is that everyone wants it. Like influenza, you can give it away without losing any of it yourself.

It is a curious thing. that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.