We confess our bad qualities to others out of fear of appearing naive or ridiculous by not being aware of them.

Middle age snuffs out more talent than even wars or sudden death.

Everyone alters and is altered by everyone else. We are all the time taking in portions of one another or else reacting against them, and by these involuntary acquisitions and repulsions modifying our natures.

In a happy marriage it is the wife who provides the climate, the husband the landscape.

One road to happiness is to cultivate curiosity about everything. Not only about people but about subjects, not only about the arts but about history and foreign customs. Not only about countries and cities, but about plants and animals. Not only about lichened rocks and curious markings on the bark of trees, but about stars and atoms. Not only about your friends but about that strange labyrinth we inhabit which we call ourselves. Then, if we do that, we will never suffer a moment's boredom.

When I write a page that reads badly I know that it is myself who has written it. When it reads well it has come through from somewhere else.

We should all live as if we were never going to die, for it is the deaths of our friends that hurt us, not our own.