The dead alive and busy.
—Vaughan
Pretentious nonsense is written in a certain unmistakable cadence, a low hum calculated to lull you into acquiescence through inattention. You’re not supposed to try too hard to piece the meaning together, and you are always sorry if you do.
The only way to escape the thrall of a philosopher is to read him.
We would all be incomparably better-educated if we had read the same books in the right order.
We used to burn old books; the modern refinement is to alter them.
One can be ill-read on many books and well-read on a very few.
One needs a lot of learning to wear it lightly.
Fiction, unlike life, is obliged to make sense.
Sometimes a story has one side, usually many, never two.
Always keep a book handy for when you’re not up to thinking.
When a critic says that the book he is reviewing is “better than X”, he is advising you, in the strongest possible terms, to read X.