Александрийский квартет

The Mediterranean is an absurdly small sea; the length and
greatness of its history makes us dream it larger than it is.

Personality as something with fixed attributes is an illusion — but a necessary illusion if we are to love!

Personality as something with fixed attributes is an illusion — but a necessary illusion if we are to love!

What I most need to do is to record experiences, not in the
order in which they took place — for that is history — but in the order in which they first became significant for me.

To the Cartesian proposition: “I think, therefore I am”, he opposed his own, which must have gone something like this: “I imagine, therefore I belong and am free”.

If she ever knew me at all she must later have discovered that for those of us who feel deeply and who are at all conscious of the inextricable tangle of human thought there is only one response to be made — ironic tenderness and silence.

If she ever knew me at all she must later have discovered that for those of us who feel deeply and who are at all conscious of the inextricable tangle of human thought there is only one response to be made — ironic tenderness and silence.

We are the children of our landscape; it dictates behaviour and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it.

These are the moments which possess the writer, not the lover, and which live on perpetually. One can return to them time and time again in memory, or use them as a fund upon which to build the part of one’s life which is writing. One can debauch them with words, but one cannot spoil them.

These are the moments which possess the writer, not the lover, and which live on perpetually. One can return to them time and time again in memory, or use them as a fund upon which to build the part of one’s life which is writing. One can debauch them with words, but one cannot spoil them.

He is a rare figure among the diplomats in that he appears to possess a vertebral column. For him the tiresome treadmill of protocol and entertainment — so like a surrealist nightmare — is full of exotic charm. He sees diplomacy through the eyes of a Douanier Rousseau.
He indulges himself with it but never allows it to engulf what remains of his intellect. I suppose the secret of his success is his tremendous idleness, which almost approaches the supernatural.

As for me I am neither happy nor unhappy; I lie suspended
like a hair or a feather in the cloudy mixtures of memory.

Yet one touch of humour would have saved him from such dreadful comprehensive suffering. It is easy to criticise, I know. I know.

Ах, Англия!.. Единственная в мире страна, где стыдятся бедности.

Счастье нужно ждать в засаде, как перепелку или как девчонку с усталыми крыльями.

Болезнь вызывает презрение, и больные об этом знают.

Воспитание и умение чувствовать редко уживаются вместе, и есть прекрасный выход — заполнить, замаскировать пустоты путаным шифром хороших манер, проверенных форм сношения с внешним миром.

Если бы ей довелось когда-нибудь действительно заглянуть мне в душу, она бы поняла, что для тех из нас, кто способен глубоко чувствовать и кто осознал неизбежную ограниченность человеческой мысли, существует только один вариант ответа — ироническая нежность и молчание.