I have a sense of melancholy isolation, life rapidly vanishing, all the usual things. It's very strange how often strong feelings don't seem to carry any message of action

Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.

Sex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes.

Never such innocence, Never before or since, As changed itself to past Without a word--the men Leaving the gardens tidy, The thousands of marriages Lasting a little while longer: Never such innocence again.

You can't put off being young until you retire.

In everyone there sleeps. A sense of life lived according to love. To some it means the difference they could make. By loving others, but across most it sweeps. As all they might have done had they been loved. That nothing cures.

And the case of butterflies so rich it looks As if all summer settled there and died.