One would expect boredom to be a great yawning emotion, but it isn't, of course. It's a small niggling thing.

Letterwriting is the natural outlet of the "odds." The busy-bodies, the idle, the perverted, the cranks, the feel-it-my-duties ... Also the plain depraved. They all write letters. It's their safe outlet, you see. They can be as interfering, as long-winded, as obscene, as pompous, as one-idea'd, as they like on paper, and no one can kick them for it. So they write. My God, how they write!

Nothing puts things in perspective as quickly as a mountain.

I expect this is what death is like when you meet it. Sort of wildly unfair but inevitable.

Nothing great ever came out of common sense.

You can't have a tin can tied to your tail and go through life pretending it isn't there.

Riches ... don't consist in having things, but in not having to do something you don't want to do. ... Riches is being able to thumb your nose.