“Amazing what the British do with language; the nuances of politeness. The world's great diplomats, surely.”

“I’d thought I knew what beauty was in women; but she’d surpassed all the language I had for it.”

“Our language needs endless synonyms for beautiful; the eyes could see what the tongue cannot possibly describe.”

“I was no conscious chronicler or witness of the events that unfolded in those times. Surely you understand. You must understand. Do you look thousands of years into the future? Do you measure what's happening to you now by what may matter a thousand years hence? I was stumbling and lurching, groping and from time to time drowning, as any man might.”

“There were many markings in pencil, and those strange symbols again, dashed off, it seemed, revealing their opacity what a complex and abstract thing written language is.”

“We live in a world full of accidents finally in which on aesthetic principles have a consistency of which we can be sure. Right and wrong we will struggle with forever striving to create and maintain an ethical balance. Right and wrong we will struggle with forever, striving to create and maintain an ethical balance; but the shimmer of summer rain under the street lamps or the great flashing glare of artillery against a night sky – such brutal beauty is beyond dispute.”

“I believe that I must do everything I can do to lessen misery. That's all I can do, and that is something enormous. It is a great power.”