Idleness is righteous if it is comfortable. Uncomfortable idleness is sin & sinful waste.

The baby romped on my lap like a short stout salmon.

You are only young once. At the time it seems endless, and is gone in a flash; and then for a very long time you are old.

no one wants to be praised for possibilities when one has submitted performances.

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.

[John Craske] painted like a man giving witness under oath to a wild story.

I wish I could write librettos for the rest of my life. It is the purest of human pleasures, a heavenly hermaphroditism of being both writer and musician. No wonder that selfish beast Wagner kept it all to himself.