The public, as a whole, finds reassurance in longevity, and, after the necessary interlude of reaction, is disposed to recognize extreme old age as a sign of excellence. The long-liver has triumphed over at least one of man's initial handicaps: the brevity of life.

I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. Oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly.You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it.

I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all.

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

Travel is the most private of pleasures. There is no greater bore than the travel bore. We do not in the least want to hear what he has seen in Hong-Kong.

There is always something else to do. A gardener should have nine times as many lives as a cat.

Every garden-maker should be an artist along his own lines. That is the only possible way to create a garden, irrespective of size or wealth.