Guests can be, and often are, delightful, but they should never be allowed to get the upper hand.

For I'm afraid of loneliness; shiveringly, terribly afraid. I don't mean the ordinary physical loneliness, for here I am, deliberately travelled away from London to get to it, to its spaciousness and healing. I mean that awful loneliness of spirit that is the ultimate tragedy of life. When you've got to that, really reached it, without hope, without escape, you die. You just can't bear it, and you die.

if you have once thoroughly bored somebody it is next to impossible to unbore him.

I have been much afflicted again lately by visitors . . . and they gave me to understand that if they had had the arranging of the garden it would have been finished long ago - whereas I don't believe a garden is ever finished. They have all gone now, thank heaven.

Who can begin conventional amiability the first thing in the morning?

And the summer seems as though it would dream on for ever.

I want to be as idle as I can, so that my soul may have time to grow.