Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ, The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.

Freedom has a thousand charms to show, That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.

Low ambition and the thirst of praise.

Thus happiness depends, as Nature shows, Less on exterior things than most suppose.

The storytelling gift is innate: one has it or one doesn't. But style is at least partly a learned thing: one refines it by looking and listening and reading a…

He had the kind of handshake that ought never to be used except as a tourniquet.

The smell of the library was always the same - the musty odour of old clothes mixed with the keener scent of unwashed bodies, creating what the chief librarian…