History, which interprets the past to understand the present and confront the future is the least rewarding discipline for a dying species.

Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.

Charm is often despised but I can never see why. No one has it who isn't capable of genuinely liking others, at least at the actual moment of meeting and speaking. Charm is always genuine; it may be superficial but it isn't false.

Childhood is the one prison from which there's no escape, the one sentence from which there's no appeal. We all serve our time.

A letter is paradoxically the most revealing and the most deceptive of confessional revelations. We all have our inconsistencies, prejudices, irrationalities which, although strongly felt at the time, may be transitory. A letter captures the mood of the moment. The transitory becomes immutably fixed, part of the evidence for the prosecution or the defence.

There is no point in regretting any part of the past. The past can't now be altered, the future has yet to be lived, and consciously to experience every moment of the present is the only way to gain at least the illusion of immortality.

If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.