. . . she read with undifferentiated glee . . .

He saw a picture in his mind of a terrible piling up of the dead. It came from his contemplation of the church, but it had its own clarity: the row on row, the deep rotting earth hollowed out to hold them, while the efforts of the living, with all their works and wars and great buildings, were no more than the beat of a wing against the weight of time.

Shakespeare drew a map of the human mind as clearly as Newton mapped the heavens. Wht is one considered science and the other fir only to be mocked with jokes about pretty girls and drury lane?

As he rounded the corner, he saw two dozen men, naked to the waist, digging a hole thirty yards square at the side of the path. For a moment he was baffled. It seemed to have no agricultural purpose; there was no more planting or ploughing to be done. Then he realized what it was. They were digging a mass grave. He thought of shouting an order to about turn or at least to avert their eyes, but they were almost on it, and some of them had already seen their burial place. The songs died on their lips and the air was reclaimed by the birds.

It's better to have a malign providence than an indifferent one.

But I think if any song can touch the heart, then one should value it.

The end-of-summer winds make people restless.