. . . life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t'other from which . . .

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. . .

There is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.

Reformers who are obsessed with purity and cannot see that their obsession is impure.

Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull.

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

It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.