How fragile was that elegant, complicated bridge of order and reason which the law had constructed down the centuries over the abyss of social and ps… - P. D. James

Unless the young can use language effectively, both to express their own minds and to understand the minds of others, it is difficult to see how we can have a vigorous democracy in which ideas and policies can be intelligently presented, considered and criticised or achieve that understanding with other countries which nations enjoy through access to each other's language and literature.

How odd, he thought, that one could get used to beauty [i.e. in one's wife]. Once he had thought that any price would be worth paying if he could possess it, know it to be exclusively his, feed on it, be comforted, exalted, even sanctified by it. But you couldn't possess beauty any more than you could possess another human being.

If there's any sort of existence after death we shall all know it soon enough. If there isn't, we shan't exist to complain that we've been cheated.