What is youth except a man or a woman before it is ready or fit to be seen.

He had no strength for any other war than his own solitary struggle to keep alive.

You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.

Dearest Charles-- I found a box of this paper at the back of a bureau so I must write to you as I am mourning for my lost innocence. It never looked like living. The doctors despaired of it from the start... I am never quite alone. Members of my family keep turning up and collecting luggage and going away again, but the white raspberries are ripe. I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits. Love or what you will. S.

Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher

You spend the first term at Oxford meeting interesting and exciting people and the rest of your time there avoiding them

His courtesy was somewhat extravagant. He would write and thank people who wrote to thank him for wedding presents and when he encountered anyone as punctilious as himself the correspondence ended only with death.