“At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.”

“A man learns with age, if he is lucky.”

“Sophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the presence of a formidable menace to one's poise and prestige (such as the butler, or the man under the bed — but never the husband).”

“Seventy thousand years ago, homo sapiens was still an insignificant animal minding its own business in a corner of Africa. In the following millennia it transformed itself into the master of the entire planet and the terror of the ecosystem. Today it stands on the verge of becoming a god, poised to acquire not only eternal youth, but also the divine abilities of creation and destruction.”

“Attitude is the first quality that marks the successful man. If he has a positive attitude and is a positive thinker, who likes challenges and difficult situations, then he has half his success achieved.”

“Conducting is, after all, a difficult business – one has to be seventy years of age to realise this fully!”

“A man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.”

“The continuous cries for help - from children and women and men - ring in my ears, even today seventy-seven years later.”

“Between a man and a woman both aged fifty there are two full generations, for she might well wed a man in his seventies, and he a girl of twenty.”

“If a man says a thing often enough, he is very likely to acquire some sort of faith in it sooner or later.”