His courtesy was somewhat extravagant. He would write and thank people who wrote to thank him for wedding presents and when he encountered anyone as punctilious as himself the correspondence ended only with death.

Don't give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can't express them. Don't analyze yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.

Don't hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.

A typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it."

: Diary entry (March 1964), after hearing that doctors had removed a benign tumor from Randolph Churchill|Randolph Churchill.

I put the words down and push them a bit.

Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else.

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.