The fact that, within ten years, I lost one world, and after a time rose again, as it were, from spiritual death to find another, seems to me one of the strongest arguments against suicide that life can provide. There may not be - I believe that there is not - resurrection after death, but nothing could prove more conclusively than my own brief but eventful history the fact that resurrection is possible within our limited span of earthly time.

When the Great War broke out, it came to me not as a superlative tragedy, but as an interruption of the most exasperating kind to my personal plans.

Only, I felt, by some such attempt to write history in terms of personal life could I rescue something that might be of value, some element of truth and hope and usefulness, from the smashing up of my own youth by the war.

I had seen the poor, the meek and the modest, the young, the brave and the idealistic - all those, in fact, who always are too easily enchanted by high-sounding phrases - giving their lives and their futures in order that the powerful might have more power, the rich grow richer, the old remain in comparative security.

I found it not inappropriate that the years of frustration and grief and loss, of work and conflict and painful resurrection, should have led me through their dark and devious ways to this new beginning.

Eén van de belangrijkste factoren voor geestelijke groei is immers tijd om na te denken en vrije tijd om uitdrukking te kunnen geven aan je gedachten.

...if only the comfortable prosperity of the Victorian age hadn't lulled us into a false conviction of individual security and made us believe that what was going on outside our homes didn't matter to us, the Great War might never have happened.

Als je eenmaal van de bergtop omlaag hebt gekeken, is het moeilijk om tevreden in de vallei te blijven...

Ik besefte nog niet (...) dat alleen een proces van volledige aanpassing, het uitwissen van smaak, talent en zelfs herinneringen, het leven draaglijk maakte voor iemand die oog in oog stond met de allerergste aspecten van een oorlog.