Ambition, if it were to be savored, let alone achieved, had to be rooted in possibility.

the unforgivable was usually the most easily forgiven.

Work did bestow dignity, status, meaning. Wasn't that why people dreaded unemployment, why some men found retirement so traumatic?

Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.

Charm is always genuine; it may be superficial but it isn't false.

Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast.

I wonder if childhood is ever really happy. Just as well, perhaps. To be blissfully happy so young would leave one always seeking to recapture the unobtainable. Like those people who were always happiest at school or university. Always going back. No reunion ever missed. It always seemed to me rather pathetic.