public work brings a vicarious but assured sense of immortality. We may be poor, weak, timid, in debt to our landlady, bullied by our nieces, stiff in the joints, shortsighted and distressed; we shall perish, but the cause endures; the cause is great.

Why, why, when one writes, does a sort of shackle bind one's imagination? I become conscious of a deadening mediocrity, perhaps a form of mental cowardice, and I long to break free, to let my imagination take wings. It doesn't - yet.

If we haven't a grouch against Fortune, we seem unable to avoid one against ourselves.

why haven't we seventy lives? One is no use.

But questioning does not mean the end of loving, and loving does not mean the abnegation of intelligence

the ruder lecturers are, and the louder their voices, the more converts they make to their opinions.

We each live in a private, distorted, individual world - stars turning in space, warmed for a moment by each other's light, then lost in infinite distance.