anyone who gets up early by inclination or has been forced to rise early out of necessity finds it intolerable that others should go on sleeping soundly

I was a good pupil at primary school: in the second class I was writing with no spelling mistakes, and the third and fourth classes were done in a single year.

Society has to change, but the political powers we have at the moment are not enough to effect this change. The whole democratic system would have to be rethought.

Liking is probably the best form of ownership, and ownership the worst form of liking.

...the human being to lack that second skin we call egoism has not yet been born, it lasts much longer than the other one, that bleeds so readily.

Such is our need to shower blame on some distant entity when it is we who lack the courage to face up to what is there before us.

Perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might express a tiny part of what it is.