Every scene, even the commonest, is wonderful, if only one can detach oneself, casting off all memory of use and custom, and behold it (as it were) for the first time; in its right, authentic colors; without making comparisons. Cherish and burnish this faculty of seeing crudely, simply, artlessly, ignorantly; of seeing like a baby or a lunatic, who lives each moment by itself and tarnishes by the present no remembrance of the past.

The war years count double. Things and people not actively in use age twice as fast.

You are not in charge of the universe; you are in charge of yourself.

It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.

Time is the explicable raw material of everything.

A man of sixty has spent twenty years in bed and over three years in eating.

Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.