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.

I like a bit of color myself, I must say. At my time of life, if you wear nothing but black, people might think you were too mean to change frocks between funerals.

[On golf:] One of the most distressing defects of civilization.

Nature is not silent, and never was a name more derisively inappropriate than when we speak of these non-human creatures who hoot and crow and bray as the dumb animals.

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.

Really, trees are nearly as important as men, and much better behaved.

All adventuring is rash, and all innovations dangerous. But not nearly so dangerous as stagnation and dry rot. From grooves, cliques, clichés and resignation - Good Lord deliver us!