Click, clack, click, clack, went their conversation, like so many knitting-needles, purl, plain, purl, plain, achieving a complex pattern of references, cross-references, Christian names, nicknames, and fleeting allusions.

that pathetic short-cut suggested by Nature the supreme joker as a remedy for our loneliness, that ephemeral communion which we persuade ourselves to be of the spirit when it is in fact only of the body - durable not even in memory!

Not seeing is half-believing.

Prose is a poor thing, a poor inadequate thing, compared with poetry which says so much more in shorter time.

To hope for Paradise is to live in Paradise, a very different thing from actually getting there.

For the last 40 years of my life I have broken my back, my fingernails, and sometimes my heart, in the practical pursuit of my favourite occupation.

For a young man to start his career with a love affair with an older woman was quite de rigueur ... Of course, it must not go on for too long. An apprenticeship was a very different thing from a career.