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.

For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.

If it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy.

After all, what is a lovely phrase? One that has mopped up as much Truth as it can hold.

So coming back from a journey, or after an illness, before habits had spun themselves across the surface, one felt that same unreality, which was so startling; felt something emerge. Life was most vivid then.

A million candles burnt in him without his being at the trouble of lighting a single one

To let oneself be carried on passively is unthinkable.