The Persian's mind, like his illuminated manuscripts, does not deal in perspective: two thousand years, if he happens to know anything about them, are as exciting as the day before yesterday.

Fair and unfair are among the most influential words in English and must be delicately used.

it is a lean employment of time to brood on what might have happened along some other turning.

A part of all art is to make silence speak. The things left out in painting, the note withheld in music, the void in architecture - all are as necessary and as active as the utterance itself.

From love one can only escape at the price of life itself; and no lessening of sorrow is worth exile from that stream of all things human and divine.

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

To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure.