“One should go easy on smashing other people’s lies. Better to concentrate on one’s own.”

Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.

The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life’s major mysteries.

I don’t think I can marry, I’m not fit for it, I’m not real enough. That’s the trouble. I’m a puppet that’s realised what’s wrong with itself and it’s horrible. I’m propped up somewhere all alone, watching the real people go past. I’m propped up crying in a corner.

I took a deep breath, however, and followed my rule of never speaking frankly to women in moments of emotion. No good ever comes of this.

That doesn’t sound like you, you ride every wave. There is one that will drown me

The theatre is certainly a place for learning about the brevity of human glory: oh all those wonderful glittering absolutely vanished pantomime! Now I shall abjure magic and become a hermit : put myself in a situation where I can honestly say that I have nothing else to do but to learn to be good.

Hegel says that Truth is a great word and the thing is greater still. With Dave we never seemed to get past the word.

Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.

In philosophy if you aren’t moving at a snail’s pace you aren’t moving at all.

I feel I’m at the end of something – everything is going to be different – and terrible.

An experience is richest not talked of.

We can only learn to love by loving.

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.

We are all prisoner, but the name of our cure is not freedom.

To lose somebody is to lose not only their person but all those modes and manifestations into which their person has flowed outwards; so that in losing a beloved one may find so many things, pictures, poems, melodies, places lost too: Dante, Avignon, a song of Shakespeare’s, the Cornish sea.

Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.

Missing you is the cruelest thing I could do to my heart, and maybe that’s why I do it: its easier to hurt myself than love myself.

People are so into digital recording now they forgot how easy analog recording can be.

I still care about people but it would be so much easier not to care. I don’t want to get too close; I don’t like to touch things.

The big difference for me is that, as I get older, I find it’s a lot easier to stay in shape than it is to get back in shape.

The best way to take it easy is to go easy on yourself.

I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist, but I don’t like girls pretending to be stupid because it’s easier.

Time goes by at such a pace,it’s funny how it’s easy to forget her face

Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.