The aspiring author, whether genius or not, should never let a day pass without writing at least a few lines. - André Maurois

In this lack of diplomatic preparation and in this abandonment of Europe to German hegemony the responsibility of Great Britain was at least as great as that of France. Many powerful groups were united in restraining Great Britain from adopting a courageous and foresighted foreign policy. The bankers of the City were concerned about the money they had loaned to Germany and they persisted in the naïve hope that they could do business with a country that was shouting from the roof tops its intention to be self-sufficient. A certain number of persons of importance in England, terrified by Bolshevism, believed foolishly they had found in Nazism a barrier to the Revolution. At the same time the intellectual liberals were preaching peace at any price and unilateral disarmament, which was destined to be the death of liberalism. All these tendencies combined magnificently to play into the hands of Germany.

It is not events and the things one sees and enjoys that produce happiness, but a state of mind which can endow events with its own quality, and we must hope for the duration of this state rather than the recurrence of pleasurable events. Is this state actually an interior one, and can we recognize it otherwise than the by the changes it produces in all exterior things? If we exclude sensation and memory from our thoughts, there is nothing left but a wordless emptiness. Where can pure ecstasy and pure happiness be found? As certain phosphorescent fish see the deep water, the seaweed, and the other creatures of the sea light up at their approach but never perceive the movable source of this illumination because it is in themselves, so the happy man, though he is aware of his effect upon others, has difficulty in perceiving his happiness and even greater difficulty in predicting it.

He who allows himself to be devoured will be devoured, and he will die before he has done his work. The man who has an ardent passion for work asks of others only what will help him. He shirks no work that ca be of use and that he ca do well, but he flies from conversations, meetings, talkfests, studios full of phrase-makers. Goethe even advises such a man to ignore daily events if he cannot do anything about them. If we spend an hour every morning informing ourselves about distant wars and another hour lamenting their possible consequences, when we are neither ministers, generals, nor journalists, nor anything, we render no service to our country and we waste the most irrecoverable of our possessions: our own short life.