Constructive destruction is one of the most delightful employments in the world, and in civilized life the opportunities for it are only too rare.

It took me forty years on earth To reach this sure conclusion: There is no Heaven but clarity, No Hell except confusion.

I can't abide cats myself, but of course we have to have one in the kitchen to deal with the mice. I insisted on getting a black one, because anything else shows the dirt so in London.

It oughtn't to need a war to make us talk to each other in buses, and invent our own amusements in the evenings, and live simply, and eat sparingly, and recover the use of our legs, and get up early enough to see the sun rise.

A single person is a manageable entity, whom you can either make friends with or leave alone. But half of a married couple is not exactly a whole human being: if the marriage is successful it is something a little more than that; if unsuccessful, a little less. In either case, a fresh complication is added to the already intricate business of friendship: as Clem had once remarked, you might as well try to dance a tarantella with a Siamese twin.

One is what one remembers: no more, no less.

[Gardening] is a means by which you can attain many valuable hours of solitude without being thought unsociable.