Courage and endurance are useless if they are never tested.
There isn’t one kind of happiness, there’s all kinds. Decision is torment for anyone with imagination. When you decide, you multiply the things you might have done and now never can.
She did not know that morality is seldom a safe guide for human conduct.
But time given to wishing for what can’t be is not only spent, but wasted, and for all that we waste we shall be accountable.
Tilda cared nothing for the future, and had, as a result, a great capacity for happiness.
Florence had noticed one or two eccentricities in herself lately, which might be the result of hard work, or of age, or of living alone. When the letters came, for example, she often found herself wasting time in looking at the postmarks and wondering whoever they could be from, instead of opening them in a sensible manner and finding out at once.
There’s two ways to be selfish. You can think too much about yourself, or you can think too little about others. You’re selfish both ways.
It was defeat, but defeat is less unwelcome when you are tired.
If there’s even one person who might be hurt by a decision, you should never make it.
Old age is not the same thing as historical interest,’ he said. ‘Otherwise we should both of us be more interesting than we are.
I have read Lolita, as you requested. It is a good book, and therefore you should try to sell it to the inhabitants of Hardborough. They won’t understand it, but that is all to the good. Understanding makes the mind lazy.
All distances are the same to those who don’t meet.
Understanding makes the mind lazy.
Richard was the kind of man who has two clean handkerchiefs on him at half past three in the morning.
Her courage, after all, was only a determination to survive. The.
Opportunity, after all, is only another word for temptation.
She had once seen a heron flying across the estuary and trying, while it was on the wing, to swallow an eel which it had caught. The eel, in turn, was struggling to escape from the gullet of the heron and appeared a quarter, a half, or occasionally three-quarters of the way out. The indecision expressed by both creatures was pitiable. They had taken on too much.
He said, aloud, ‘The external world is the world of shadows. It throws its shadows into the kingdom of light. How different they will appear when this darkness is gone and the shadow-body has passed away. The universe, after all, is within us. The way leads inward, always inwards.
Broadcasting House was in fact dedicated to the strangest project of the war, or of any war, that is, telling the truth. Without prompting, the BBC had decided that truth was more important than consolation, and, in the long run, would be more effective. And yet there was no guarantee of this. Truth ensures trust, but not victory, or even happiness.
I enjoy very little leisure in the evenings. But don’t misunderstand me, I find a good book at my bedside of incalculable value. When I eventually retire I’ve no sooner read a few pages than I’m overwhelmed with sleep.