The return to a favorite novel is generally tied up with changes in oneself that must be counted as improvements, but have the feel of losses. It is like going back to a favorite house, country, person; nothing is where it belongs, including one's heart.

You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk.

It has to be acknowledged that in capitalist society, with its herds of hippies, originality has become a sort of fringe benefit, a mere convention, accepted obsolescence, the Beatnik model being turned in for the Hippie model, as though strangely obedient to capitalist laws of marketing.

Old money is fully as moronic as new money but it has inherited an appearance of cultivation.

What's the use of falling in love if you both remain inertly as you were?

If you want to be your own master ... always be surprised by evil; never anticipate it.

Leisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over Europe in cultivated pastimes: sonneteering, the lute, games and acrostics, travel, gentlemanly studies and sports, hunting and hawking, treated as arts.