after all the work of the philosophers on his soul and the doctors on his body, what can we really say we know about a man? That he is, when all is said and done, just a passage for liquids and solids, a pipe of flesh.

Truth is a matter of direct apprehension-you can't climb a ladder of mental concepts to it.

I am just a refugee from the long slow toothache of English life. It is terrible to love life so much you can hardly breathe!

The national characteristics... the restless metaphysical curiosity, the tenderness of good living and the passionate individualism. This is the invisible constant in a place with which the ordinary tourist can get in touch just by sitting quite quietly over a glass of wine in a Paris bistro.

Love joins and then divides. How else would we be growing?

What are stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?

We are all hunting for rational reasons for believing in the absurd.