A beard on a man is only a way of hiding something, his face of course, but also the inner matters, like a hedge around a secret garden, or a cover over a bird cage.

The world begins anew with every birth, my father used to say. He forgot to say, with every death it ends. Or did not think he needed to. Because for a goodly part of his life he worked in a graveyard.

After all the world is indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man we might be continuously happy in it.

And whatever my life had been up to that day, it was another life after that. And that is the gospel truth.

That is because at the close of the day the ship we sail in is the soul, not the body.

It is very difficult to be a hero without an audience, although, in a sense, we are each the hero of a peculiar, half-ruined film called our life.

Tears have a better character cried alone. Pity can sometimes be more wolf than dog.