Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys. - Joseph Conrad

All idealisation makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity — it is to destroy it.

I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.

Life knows us not and we do not know life — -we don’t know even our own thoughts. Half the words we use have no meaning whatever and of the other half each man understands each word after the fashion of his own folly and conceit. Faith is a myth and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of tomorrow