But probably that's the way of the world - when we have finally learned something we're too old to apply it - and so it goes, wave after wave, generation after generation. No one learns anything at all from anyone else.

Modesty and conscientiousness receive their reward only in novels. In life they are exploited and then shoved aside.

And even if these scenes from our youth were given back to us we would hardly know what to do. The tender, secret influence that passed from them into us could not rise again. We might be amongst them and move in them; we might remember and love them and be stirred by the sight of them. But it would be like gazing at the photograph of a dead comrade; those are his features, it is his face, and the days we spent together take on a mournful life in the memory; but the man himself it is not.

You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well.

Keep things at arm's length... If you let anything come too near you want to hold on to it. And there is nothing a man can hold on to.

No matter how improbable an assertion is, if it is made with enough assurance it has an affect.

We have our dreams because without them we could not bear the truth.