Wine is a bride who brings a great dowry to the man who woos her persistently and gracefully.

One has to regard a man as a Master who can produce on average three uniquely brilliant and entirely original similes to every page.

If every museum in the New World were emptied, if every famous building in the Old World were destroyed and only Venice saved, there would be enough there to fill a full lifetime with delight. Venice, with all its complexity and variety, is in itself the greatest surviving work of art in the world.

...its a rather pleasant change when all your life you've had people looking after you, to have someone to look after yourself. Only of course it has to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me.

There is an Easter sense in which all things are made new in the risen Christ. A tiny gleam of this is reflected in all true art.

Where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans of the storm?

I think to be oversensitive about cliches is like being oversensitive about table manners.