Jealousy ... is an affliction of the spirit which, unlike some sins of the flesh, gives no one any pleasure.

Beware of men bearing flowers.

You look for one thing and you find another.

It isn't necessarily the great and famous beauty spots we fall in love with. As with people, so with places. Love is unforeseen, and we can all find ourselves affectionately attached to the minor and the less obvious.

From my experience of life I believe my personal motto should be: 'Beware of any man bringing flowers.

If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.

Contradictions in human character are one of its most consistent notes.