Like all mystics (and many novelists, not least the present one) he is baffled, a child, before the real now; far happier out of it, in a narrative past or a prophetic future, locked inside that weird tence grammar does not allow, the imaginary present.

Though I like the various forms of football in the world, I don't think they begin to compare with these two great Anglo-Saxon ball games for sophisticated elegance and symbolism. Baseball and cricket are beautiful and highly stylized medieval war substitutes, chess made flesh, a mixture of proud chivalry and base - in both senses - greed. With football we are back to the monotonous clashing armor of the brontosaurus.

But I think the most harmful change brought about by Victorian science in our attitude to nature lies in the demand that our relation with it must be purposive, industrious, always seeking greater knowledge.

Time is not a road - it is a room.

The practise of an art is essential to the whole man, not because of what art is but because of what art does to the artist.

There cannot be any true leisure until all the world possesses it equally.

The world began in hazard and will end in it.