Things good in themselves ... perfectly valid in the integrity of their origins, become fetters if they cannot alter.

... it is a matter of civilizing everyone or not being civilized at all: the decay has always come from a partial civilization.

Whoever designed this frigging map was having a laugh. Just around the corner, my arse.

I dislike being an anvil for the hammering out of other people's virtues.

Life, to be happy at all, must be in its way a sacrament, and it is a failure in religion to divorce it from the holy acts of everyday, of ordinary human existence.

Accuracy is the basis of style. Words dress our thoughts and should fit; and should fit not only in their utterances, but in their implications, their sequences, and their silences, just as in architecture the empty spaces are as important as those that are filled.

Pain and fear and hunger are effects of causes which can be foreseen and known: but sorrow is a debt which someone else makes for us.