William Darling (politician)

"War is not horrible all the time, as pacifists seem to believe. There are compensations for everything, and there is compensation in comradeship, intimacy, freedom from economic anxiety, the knowledge…"

"I replace Hergesheimer's book and feel again the immensity of my little business – how it makes its master willy-nilly a veritable time-traveller though he never leaves his shop! Where is there a day'…"

"A fair exchange is so difficult to understand. How much do these inscrutable customers of mine desire my books? What would be a fair exchange? There are no balances in which such bargains can be weigh…"

"The world is so full of wonderful things that at this stage in its history there would seem to be no justification for aught else than that we should just wonder and give thanks."

"Anarchism being immediately impracticable, let us have a government which governs as little as possible. Lord Melbourne's attitude of mind should be commended for imitation to all Prime Ministers. On …"

"A cat is the ideal literary companion. A wife, I am sure, cannot compare except to her disadvantage. A dog is out of the question. It may do at a butcher's – it would be out of place in a bookseller's…"

"I am an unrepentant book lover, and so soaked am I in the love of books that I feel – poor twentieth-century shopkeeper that I am – I feel that Pliny is a man I know, for all the eighteen centuries an…"

"That frivolous young widow ought to have paid for the solace she declared so often she found in books. "I must read to forget." All very well, but she should not forget to pay for the means of forgetf…"