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

Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.

Professional reviewers read so many bad books in the course of duty that they get an unhealthy craving for arresting phrases.

There is no ordinary run of mankind, there are only individuals who are totally different. And whether a man is naked and black and stands on one foot in Sudan or is clothed in some kind of costume in a bus in England, they are still individuals of entirely different characters.

The languor of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost!

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.

that is not the last word; it is not even an apt word; it is a dead word from ten years back.