Archives for July 4, 2007

“I was aware of an unexpected drift towards intimacy; although this sudden sense of knowing her all at once much better was not simultaneously accompanied by any clear portrayal in my own mind of the kind of person she might really be. Perhaps intimacy of any sort, love or friendship, impedes all exactness of definition….In short, the persons we see most clearly are not necessarily those we know best. In any case, to attempt to describe a woman in the broad terms employable for a man is perhaps irrational.”
Anthony Powell, A Buyer’s Market

“The American mind exasperated the European as a buzz-saw might exasperate a pine-forest.”
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams