There was no freedom in life, and certainly there was none in death.

Once you fall, Septimus repeated to himself, human nature is on you. Holmes and Bradshaw are on you. They scour the desert. They fly screaming into the wilderness. The rack and the thumbscrew are applied. Human nature is remorseless.

To sit and contemplate - to remember the faces of women without desire, to be pleased by the great deeds of men without envy, to be everything and everywhere in sympathy and yet content to remain where and what you are.

I have sought happiness through many ages and not found it.

Let us not take for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.

One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats - and one always secretes too much jelly.

They say the sky is the same everywhere. Travellers, the shipwrecked, exiles, and the dying draw comfort from the thought.