Wimsey stooped for an empty sardine-tin which lay, horribly battered, at his feet, and slung it idly into the quag. It struck the surface with a noice like a wet kiss, and vanished instantly. With that instinct which prompts one, when depressed, to wallow in every circumstance of gloom, Peter leaned sadly against the hurdles and abandoned himself to a variety of shallow considerations upon (1) The vanity of human wishes; (2) Mutability; (3) First love; (4) The decay of idealism; (5) The aftermath of the Great war; (6) Birth-control; and (7) The fallacy of free-will.

To make a precise scientific description of reality out of words is like trying to build a rigid structure out of pure quicksilver.

I am better off with vegetables at the bottom of my garden than with all the fairies of the Midsummer Night's Dream.

But what are you going to do about the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?

To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life.

Learning and literature have a way of outlasting the civilization that made them.

How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.