Badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. Evil is a parasite, not an original thing.

The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, 'What? You too? I thought I was the only one!

The higher the stakes, the greater the temptation to lose your temper.

Sometimes fairy stories may say best what's to be said.

Unless the religious claims of the Bible are again acknowledged, its literary claims will, I think, be given only 'mouth honour' and that decreasingly.

Grief ... gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn't seem worth starting anything. I can't settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness.

I have read the Aeneid through more often than I have read any long poem.