I realize that it is as one ages and loses one's natural force that one is at the mercy of heredity. The young are themselves: the aging, their parents' children.

My grandmother was unsurpassable at sitting. She would sit on tombstones, glaciers, small hard benches with ants crawling over them, fragments of public monuments, other people's wheelbarrows, and when one returned one could be sure of finding her there, conversing affably with the owner of the wheelbarrow.

To one who has led a virtuous life, to sin is the easiest thing in the world. No experience of unpleasant consequences grits that smooth sliding fall, no recollection of disillusionment blurs that pure desire.

noise is a pollution.

One need not write in a diary what one is to remember for ever.

One cannot overestimate the power of a good rancorous hatred on the part of the stupid. The stupid have so much more industry and energy to expend on hating. They build it up like coral insects.

When other helpers fail and comforts flee, when the senses decay and the mind moves in a narrower and narrower circle, when the grasshopper is a burden and the postman brings no letters, and even the Royal Family is no longer quite what it was, an obituary column stands fast.