Medical science has oppressed us with a new huge burden of longevity. It is in that last undesired decade, when passion is cold, appetites feeble, curiosity dulled and experience has begotten cynicism, that accidia lies in wait as the final temptation to destruction.

There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.

Of children as of procreation -- the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable

For in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.

I prefer all but the very worst travel books, to all but the very best novels.

Of the many smells of Athens two seem to me the most characteristic - that of garlic, bold and deadly like acetylene gas. and that of dust, soft and warm and caressing like tweed.

Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums who find prison so soul-destroying.