I was seeded second in the mile and third in the two-mile, so I was happy to move up to second.

Everything?s dry now and the barn was full of hay.

Well she was bright; and she danced...And my function in life was to keep that bright thing in existence. And it was almost as difficult as trying to catch with your hand that dancing reflection. And the task lasted for years.

I may really say that for a quarter of a century I have kept before me one unflinching aim - to register my own times in terms of my own time, and still more to urge those who are better poets and better prose-writers than myself to have the same aim.

Upon my soul!' Tietjens said to himself, 'that girl down there is the only intelligent living soul I've met for years.' A little pronounced in manner sometimes; faulty in reasoning naturally, but quite intelligent, with a touch of wrong accent now and then. But if she was wanted anywhere, there she'd be! Of good stock, of course: on both sides! But positively, she and Sylvia were the only two human beings he had met for years whom he could respect: the one for sheer efficiency in killing; the other for having the constructive desire and knowing how to set about it. Kill or cure! The two functions of man. If you wanted something killed you'd go to Sylvia Tietjens in sure faith that she would kill it: emotion, hope, ideal; kill it quick and sure. If you wanted something kept alive you'd go to Valentine: she's find something to do for it. . . . The two types of mind: remorseless enemy, sure screen, dagger ... sheath!
Perhaps the future of the world then was to women? Why not? He hand't in years met a man that he hadn't to talk down to - as you talk down to a child, as he had talked down to General Campion or to Mr. Waterhouse ... as he always talked down to Macmaster. All good fellows in their way ...

Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.