No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can't really hate God either. When they want to Hate Him and His saints they have to find something like themselves and pretends it's God and hate that.

I [had] added another small piece to the pages of the atlas that were real to me.

I did not know it was possible to be so miserable and live but I am told that this is a common experience.

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.

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

One can write, think and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric.

To see Stephen Spender fumbling with our rich and delicate language is to experience all the horror of seeing a Sevres vase in the hands of a chimpanzee.