Light-heartedness always made Soames suspicious - there was generally some reason for it.

It is by muteness that a dog becomes for one so utterly beyond value; with him one is at peace, where words play no torturing tricks.Those are the moments that I think are precious to a dog-when, with his adoring soul coming through his eyes, he feels that you are really thinking of him.

Love has no age, no limit; and no death.

By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall know the texture of men's souls.

Memory heaps dead leaves on corpse-like deeds, from under which they do but vaguely offend the sense.

Beginnings are always messy.

From behind a wooden crate we saw a long black-muzzled nose poking round at us. We took him out-soft, wobbly, tearful; set him down on his four, as yet not quite simultaneous legs, and regarded him. He wandered a little round our legs, neither wagging his tail nor licking at our hands; then he looked up, and my companion said: "He's an angel!"