It is useless to read Greek in translation; translators can but offer us a vague equivalent.

. . . clumsiness is often mated with a love of solitude.

One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that.

Every season is likeable, and wet days and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude. Even sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and the most common actions──a walk, a talk, solitude in one’s own orchard──can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind. Beauty is everywhere, and beauty is only two finger’s-breadth from goodness.

Why does one write these books after all? The drudgery, the misery, the grind, are forgotten everytime; and one launches another, and it seems sheer joy and buoyancy.

If the best of one's feelings means nothing to the person most concerned in those feelings, what reality is left us?

So that is marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman looking at a girl throwing a ball