He liked slim books which he could slip into his overcoat pocket and leave there unread for months. What was… — Edward St Aubyn

Mrs Hickmann was inclined to forgive Patrick the apparent purposelessness of his life and the sinister pallor of his complexion, when she considered that he has an income of one hundred thousand pounds a year, and came from a family which, although it had done nothing since, had seen the Norman invasion from the winning side.

Of course it was wrong to want to change people, but what else could you possibly want to do with them?

The tragedy of old age, when a man’s too weak to hit his own child.