Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground. (Ode on Solitude, Alexander Pope)
At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies. (Uneasy Money, PG Wodehouse)
The fleeting hour of life of those who love the hills is quickly spent, but the hills are eternal. Always there will be the lonely ridge, the dancing beck, the silent forest; always there will be the exhilaration of the summits. These are for the seeking, and those who seek and find while there is still time will be blessed both in mind and body.” (The Western Fells, Alfred Wainwright)
Mrs Miggins, there’s nothing intellectual about wandering round Italy in a big shirt trying to get laid. ( Blackadder on Byron)
Life is life and if you don’t do something today, you have nothing to look back on tomorrow. (Evelyn McNicol, obituary in The Times)
I’m an oddity really. But I do my very very best to write well. (Look Back with Love, Dodie Smith)
I always say that my west window has all the exuberance of Chaucer, without, happily, any of the concomitant crudities of his period. (Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Reverend Lord Henry D’Ascoyne)
The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago; the second best time is today. (Chinese proverb)
A former City editor of the Telegraph, confronted with a bumptious, narcissistic interviewee, asked him how he’d describe himself. “Clubbable,” said the young show-off. “Like a baby seal?” said the City editor. (Harry Mount in The Spectator)