The East is marvellously interesting for tracing our steps back. But for going forward, it is nothing. All it can hope for is to be fertilised by Europe, so that it can start on a new phase.

A museum is not a first-hand contact: it is an illustrated lecture. And what one wants is the actual vital touch.

Why has mankind had such a craving to be imposed upon? Why this lust after imposing creeds, imposing deeds, imposing buildings, imposing language, imposing works of art? The thing becomes an imposition and a weariness at last. Give us things that are alive and flexible, which won't last too long and become an obstruction and a weariness. Even Michelangelo becomes at last a lump and a burden and a bore. It is so hard to see past him.

One should be religious in everything, have God, whatever God might be, present in everything.

There is a sixth sense, the natural religious sense, the sense of wonder.

That is your trick, your bit of filthy magic: invisibility, and the anaesthetic power to deaden my attention in your direction.

One sheds one's sicknesses in books - repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them.