If Brideshead Revisited is not a great book, it's so like a great book that many of us, at least while reading it, find it hard to tell the difference.

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I'm old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.

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

I have lived carefully, sheltered myself from the cold winds, eaten moderately of what was in season, drunk fine claret, slept in my own sheets; I shall live long.

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.

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

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

Beer commercials are so patriotic: Made the American Way. What does that have to do with America? Is that what America stands for? Feeling sluggish and urinating frequently?

Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.

Wine is a bride who brings a great dowry to the man who woos her persistently and gracefully.

You're not a woman, " he said finally. "You're the Grim Reaper with red hair!

Have you got something against faith?”“Have you got something against reason?

The body is a damn hard thing to kill.

I love jazz and funk, because it's hard. If it's not hard, it's not worth doing.

The only thing socialists produce is debt and self-esteem

I was really artistic. I did a lot of poetry, a lot of writing.

It would positively be a relief to me to dig Shakespeare up and throw stones at him.

Everything else can wait, but the search for God cannot wait.

If you're holding out for universal popularity, I'm afraid you will be in this cabin for a very long time.

The grass isn't always greener on the other side!