The great tragedy of Alzheimer's disease, and the reason why we dread it, is that it leaves us with no defence, not even against those who love us.

Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.

Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.

The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven't a chance of getting.

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

First-class travel, provided one hasn't to pay for it oneself, is the most insidiously addictive of life's luxuries.

Of the four billion life forms which have existed on this planet, three billion, nine hundred and sixty million are now extinct. We don't know why. Some by wanton extinction, some through natural catastrophe, some destroyed by meteorites and asteroids. In the light of these mass extinctions it really does seem unreasonable to suppose that Homo sapiens should be exempt. Our species will have been one of the shortest-lived of all, a mere blink, you may say, in the eye of time.