Government is the art of the momentary feasible, of the least bad attainable, and not of the rationally most desirable.

I walk in the garden, I look at the flowers and shrubs and trees and discover in them an exquisiteness of contour, a vitality of edge, or a vigour of spring, as well as an infinite variety of colour that no artefact I have seen in the last sixty years can rival...each day, as I look, I wonder where my eyes were yesterday.

There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learnt to separate them.

International affairs will be placed on a better footing when it is understood that there is no way of punishing a people for the crimes of its rulers.

Miracles happen to those who believe in them.

I am only a picture-taster, the way others are wine-or tea-tasters.

From childhood on I have had the dream of life lived as a sacrament... the dream implied taking life ritually as something holy.