The memory, experiencing and re-experiencing, has such power over one's mere personal life, that one has merely lived.

one of Mr. [Thomas] Hardy's ancestors must have married a weeping willow. There are pages and pages in his collected poems which are simply plain narratives in ballad form of how an unenjoyable time was had by all.

Man is a hating rather than a loving animal.

it is necessary that we should all have a little of the will to die, because otherwise we would find the performance of our biological duty of death too difficult.

There is nothing rarer than a man who can be trusted never to throw away happiness, however eagerly he sometimes grasps it. In history we are as frequently interested in our own doom.

Like all bad drivers, he [Henry Andrews] thought he was the best driver in the world...

There was a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking to them and listening to them for hours at a time.