Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.

Then I felt too that I might take this opportunity to tie up a few loose ends, only of course loose ends can never be properly tied, one is always producing new ones. Time, like the sea, unties all knots. Judgements on people are never final, they emerge from summings up which at once suggest the need of a reconsideration. Human arrangements are nothing but loose ends and hazy reckoning, whatever art may otherwise pretend in order to console us.

Every human soul has seen, perhaps before their birth, pure forms such as justice, temperance, beauty and all the great moral qualities which we hold in honour. We are moved towards what is good by the faint memory of these forms, simple and calm and blessed, which we saw once in a pure, clear light, being pure ourselves.

One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance.

One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats, and if some of these can be inexpensive and quickly procured so much the better.

Nothing is more maddening than being questioned by the object of one's interest about the object of hers, should that object not be you.

The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.