You'll go far. How do I know? Because life is goosing you so hard you'll never stop climbing.

How they chirped over their cups.

Any theologian understands martyrdom, but only the martyr experiences the fire.

But what I knew then was that nobody-- not even my mother-- was to be trusted in a strange world that showed very little of itself on the surface.

...the irrational will have its say, perhaps because 'irrational' is the wrong word for it.

To know all is to despise all.

Having me in the dining-room was almost the equivalent of having a Raeburn on the walls; I was classy, I was heavily varnished, and I offended nobody.

What had Pledger-Brown said? "Too bad, Davey; he wanted blood and all we could offer was guts.

The house stank; a stench all its own pervaded every corner. It was a threnody in the key of Cat minor, with a ground-bass of Old Dog, and modulations of old people, waning lives, and relinquished hopes.

..but when one human creature dies a whole world of hope and memory and feeling dies with him. To be robbed of the dignity of a natural death is a terrible deprivation.

The recognition of oneself as a part of nature, and reliance on natural things, are disappearing for hundreds of millions of people who do not know that anything is being lost.

Before she continued her search she sat in his revolving desk chair, and wept for the passing of time, and the necessary death of the well-loved, wise old man.

Subtle wits like to refresh themselves with a whiff of mild indecency.

How much more complicated life is than the attainment of a Ph.D. would lead one to believe!

Fanaticism is ... compensation for doubt

Be not another if thou canst be thyself.

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

The only people who make any sense in the world are those who know that whatever happens to them has its roots in what they are.

What an amusing drama life is when one is not obliged to be one of the characters!

Be sure you choose what you believe and know why you believe it, because if you don't choose your beliefs, you may be certain that some belief, and probably not a very credible one, will choose you.

If you cling frantically to the good, how are you to find out what the good really is?

You are certainly unique. Everyone is unique. Nobody has ever suffered quite like you before because nobody has ever been you before.

You are like a fire: you warm me.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.