... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality.

I am for the ones who represent sense, and so was Jane Austen.

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

All ideas advanced to deal with the Florentine noise problem, the Florentine traffic problem, are Utopian, and nobody believes in them, just as nobody believed in Machiavelli's Prince, a Utopian image of the ideally self-interested despot.

The exile is a singular, whereas refugees tend to be thought of in the mass ... What is implied in these nuances of social standing is the respect we pay to choice. The exile appears to have made a decision, while the refugee is the very image of helplessness.

The comic element is the incorrigible element in every human being; the capacity to learn, from experience or instruction, is what is forbidden to all comic creations and to what is comic in you and me.

... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality.