What makes you imagine ... that anything of importance can be taught in a school?

When does one ever know a human being? Perhaps only after one has realized the impossibility of knowledge and renounced the desire for it and finally ceased to feel even the need of it. But then what one achieves is no longer knowledge, it is simply a kind of co-existence; and this too is one of the guises of love.

Oh the piercing sadness of life in the midst of its ordinariness!

A letter is a barrier, a reprieve, a charm against the world, an almost infallible method of acting at a distance.

Every persisting marriage is based on fear', said Peregrine. 'Fear is fundamental, you dig down in human nature and what's at the bottom? Mean spiteful cruel self-regarding fear, whether it makes you to put the foot in it or whether it makes you to cower.

... half the world starves. What a planet. And the eating, if you're lucky enough to do any. Stuffing pieces of dead animals into a hole in your face. Then munch, munch, munch. If there's anybody watching, they must be dying of laughter.

Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.