If One Is Too Lazy To Think,

Civilization Is An Active Deposit Which Is Formed By The Combustion Of The Present With The Past. Neither In Countries Without A Present Nor In Those Without A Past Is It To Be Encountered. Proust In Venice, Matisse's Birdcages Overlooking The Flower Market At Nice, Gide On The Seventeenth-century Quais Of Toulon, Lorca In Granada, Picasso By Saint-germain-des-prés: There Lies Civilization And For Me It Can Exist Only Under Those Liberal Regimes In Which The Present Is Alive And Therefore Capable Of Assimilating The Past.

There Are Only Three Things Which Make Life Worth Living: To Be Writing A Tolerably Good Book, To Be In A Dinner Party Of Six, And To Be Traveling South With Someone Whom Your Conscience Permits You To Love.

Beneath A Mask Of Selfish Tranquility Nothing Exists Except Bitterness And Boredom.

The Worst Vice Of The Solitary Is The Worship Of His Food.

In The Sex-war, Thoughtlessness Is A Weapon Of The Male, Vindictiveness Of The Female. Both Are Reciprocally Generated, But A Woman's Desire For Revenge Outlasts All Other Emotion. Yet When Every Unkind Word About Women Has Been Said, We Have Still To Admit, With Byron, That They Are Nicer Than Men. They Are More Devoted, More Unselfish And More Emotionally Sincere. When The Long Fuse Of Cruelty, Deceit And Revenge Is Set Alight, It Is Male Thoughtlessness Which Has Fired It.