“In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.”

“If the poets offered us nothing more than another make-believe world, they would be mere sellers of drugs or, at best, sweetmeats.”

“The days on which one has been the most inquisitive are among the days on which one has been happiest.”

“The man who will not defend the honour of his cat cannot be trusted to defend anything.”

“A cat is only technically an animal, being divine.”

“There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.”

“...I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday - the longer, the better - from the great boarding-school, where we are for...”

“He went to the church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and for, and patted the children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of ho...”

“The Christmas presents once opened are Not So Much Fun as they were while we were in the process of examining, lifting, shaking, thinking about, and opening them. Three hundred sixty-five days late...”