I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly find - at the age of fifty, say - that a whole new life has opened before you, filled with things you can think about, study, or read about...It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.

Trains are wonderful.... To travel by train is to see nature and human beings, towns and churches and rivers, in fact, to see life.

That was what, ultimately, war did to you. It was not the physical dangers--the mines at sea, the bombs from the air, the crisp ping of a rifle bullet as you drove over a desert track. No, it was the spiritual danger of learning how much easier life was if you ceased to think.

No innocent person ever has an alibi.

The contemporary historian never writes such a true history as the historian of a later generation.

Use that fluff of yours you call a brain.

... obsessions are always dangerous.