“I believe we shall come to care about people less and less, Helen. The more people one knows, the easier it becomes to replace them. It’s one of the curses of London. I quite expect to end my life caring most for a place.”

I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.

Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful.

It makes a difference doesn’t it, whether we fully fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?

Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.

Human relations are impossible. When they are real they are uncomfortable, and when they are comfortable they are unreal. It was for the journey into solitude that the human soul was created.

The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.

It is so difficult – at least, I find it difficult – to understand people who speak the truth.

But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable.

Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.

The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.

But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality.

Don’t begin with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have failed.

… there are shadows because there are hills.

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

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.

If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

You put different combinations in the mix and it becomes something unique in the end.

Perhaps this is one reason why climbing has become increasingly hard as society has become increasingly, disproportionately, coddling.

The quickest way to become troubled is to be concerned with what people are gonna say about your life and your work.

We all love and become confused when we don’t act as well as we would like to.

We all become afraid. We all look at others and think these other people are more fortunate than us.

The babies have old souls and the old souls have to shrink to become little babies.

I suppose I should be happy to be misread; better be that than some of the other things I have become.

Instead of becoming the world’s expert on Buddhism, just let go, let go, let go.