“Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.”

“Life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish tother from which.”

“You mean that a Frenchman could share with a friend and yet not go to prison?’ ‘Share? Do you mean unite? If both are of age and avoid public indecency, certainly.’ ‘Will the law ever be that in England?’ ‘I doubt it. England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.”

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

“Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can’t really happen outside sleep.”

“If you let yourself go I am sure you are sensible. . . . You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By understanding George you may learn to understand yourself.”

“What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives? They have never entered into mine, but into yours, we thought--Haven't we all to struggle against life's daily greyness, against pettiness, against mechanical cheerfulness, against suspicion? I struggle by remembering my friends; others I have known by remembering some place--some beloved place or tree--we thought you one of these.”