I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly find - at the age of fifty, say - that a whole new life has opened before you, filled with things you can think about, study, or read about...It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.

Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.

Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.

Never do anything yourself that others can do for you.

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have; the older she gets the more interested he is in her.

Coffee in England always tastes like a chemistry experiment.

If one sticks too rigidly to one’s principles, one would hardly see anybody.

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainty that just to be alive is a grand thing.

I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. ‘Invention’, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.