There is a strange idea abroad, held by all monetary cranks, that credit is something a banker gives to a man. Credit, on the contrary, is something a man already has. He has it, perhaps, because he already has marketable assets of a greater cash value than the loan for which he is asking. Or he has it because his character and past record have earned it. He brings it into the bank with him. That is why the banker makes him the loan. The banker is not giving something for nothing.

When I get hold of a book I particularly admire, I am so enthusiastic that I loan it to someone who never brings it back.

When the clock stops on a life, all things emanating from it become precious, finite, and cordoned off for preservation. Each aspect of the dead person is removed from the flux of the everyday, which, of course, is where we miss him most. The quarantine around death makes it feel unlucky and wrong--a freakish incursion--and the dead, thus quarantined, come to seem more dead than they already are.... Borrowing from the dead is a way of keeping them engaged in life's daily transactions--in other words, alive.

I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Have a horse of your own and you may borrow another's.

An old loan repaid is like finding something new.

He who borrows sells his freedom.

Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.

Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.