The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always asked to do things, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.

War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted.

Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter.

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

The young feel tired at the end of an action, the old at the beginning.

For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice.