“It is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't.”

“Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.”

“I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules.”

“To tell people what to read is, as a rule, either useless or harmful; for the appreciation of literature is a question of temperament not of teaching; to Parnassus there is no primer and nothing that one can learn is ever worth learning.”

“One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.”

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

“More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read.”