The First [Friend] is the alter ego, the man who first reveals to you that you are not alone in the world by turning out (beyond hope) to share all your most secret delights. There is nothing to be overcome in making him your friend; he and you join like raindrops on a window. But the Second Friend is the man who disagrees with you about everything... Of course he shares your interests; otherwise he would not become your friend at all. But he has approached them all at a different angle. he has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one... How can he be so nearly right, and yet, invariably, just not right? He is as fascinating (and infuriating) as a woman.

I fancy that most people who think at all have done a great deal of their thinking in the first fourteen years.

The only non-Christians who seemed to me really to know anything were the Romantics; and a good many of them were dangerously tinged with something like religi…

For what comes is Judgment: happy are those whom it finds labouring in their vocations, whether they were merely going out to feed the pigs or laying good plan…

'I think there are only two kinds of people in the world. My friends . . . and other people.'

Archie Rice: Let me know where you're working tomorrow night and I'll come and see you.

Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, But which will bloom most constantly?