I'm only twenty-five. If I've made a mistake I have time to correct it.

I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos.

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of the pattern of life: the unhappiness he had suffered was no more than part of a decoration which was elaborate and beautiful; he told himself strenuously that he must accept with gaiety everything, dreariness and excitement, pleasure and pain, because it added to the richness of the design.

It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule.

Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.

It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me.