Curiosity is one of the lowest of the human faculties. You will have noticed in daily life that when people are inquisitive they nearly always have bad memories and are usually stupid at bottom.

It makes a difference doesn't it, whether we fully fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?

There was something better in life than this rub­bish, if only he could get to it—love—nobility—big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science could reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend. . .

Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.

Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out.

Our final experience, like our first, is conjectural. We move between two darkness's.

Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land.