Anybody who has ever tried to rectify an injustice or set a record straight comes to feel that he is going mad.

The fact is that gardening, more than most of our other activities except sometimes love-making, confronts us with the inexplicable.

Others are to us like the characters in fiction, eternal and incorrigible; the surprises they give us turn out in the end to have been predictable and unexpected variations on the theme of being themselves.

The dictator is also the scapegoat; in assuming absolute authority, he assumes absolute guilt; and the oppressed masses, groaning under the yoke, know themselves to be innocent as lambs, while they pray hypocritically for deliverance.

The desire to believe the best of people is a prerequisite for intercourse with strangers; suspicion is reserved for friends.

All dramatic realism is somewhat sadistic; an audience is persuaded to watch something that makes it uncomfortable and from which no relief is offered - no laughter, no tears, no purgation.

The famous Florentine elegance, which attracts tourists to the shops on Via Tornabuoni and Via della Vigna Nuova, is characterized by austerity of line, simplicity, economy of effect.