The outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a gentle habitable place; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed, was laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open house.

Wine is bottled poetry.

Anyone can carry his burden, however heavy, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, until the sun goes down. And this is all that life really means.

The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They repeat, they re-arrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, but with a singular change-that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, nonce, struck out.

A birdie with a yellow bill Hoped upon the window sill, Cocked his shining eye and said: 'Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-'ead?

Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.

The less I understood of this farrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its importance.