And there are the youngsters growing up about us, and the hands to look after, and the stock.

I daresay it seems a very commonplace unintellectual life to you, but it satisfies my nature more than the writing of books could ever do.
Besides, there are too many authors as it is.

The world is so busy reading and writing, it has no time left for thinking.

You'll tell me, of course, that books are thought, but that is only the jargon of the Press.

You come out here, old man, and sit as I do sometimes for days and nights together alone with the dumb cattle on an upheaved island of earth, as it were, jutting out into the deep sky, and you will know that they are not.