Freedom does not guarantee masterpieces.

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

The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

In Europe life retreats out of the cold, and exquisite fireside myths have resulted—Balder, Persephone—but [in India] the retreat is from the source of life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it because disillusionment cannot be beautiful. Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them.

The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life. Life passed. The tree rustled again.

I never could get on with representative individuals but people who existed on their own account and with whom it might therefore be possible to be friends.

Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.