Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership.

The strong are so stupid.

Take an old man's word; there's nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror - on the things that I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle.

The traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it.

Excuse my mistakes, realize my limitations. Life is not easy as we know it on the earth.

The sort of poetry I seek only resides in objects Man can't touch - like England 's grass network of lanes 100 years ago, but today he can destroy them and only Lord Farrer keeps him from doing it.

...the true spirit of gastronomic joylessness. Porridge fills the Englishman up, and prunes clear him out.