Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

Often on a wet day I begin counting up; what I've read; what I haven't read.

Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them.

I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.

My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?

What I like, or one of the things I like, about motoring is the sense it gives one of lighting accidentally, like a voyager who touches another planet with the tip of his toe, upon scenes which would have gone on, have always gone on, will go on, unrecorded, save for this chance glimpse. Then it seems to me I am allowed to see the heart of the world uncovered for a moment.

Beauty was not everything. Beauty had this penalty — it came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life — froze it.