My correspondence has certainly the charm of variety, and the humbler are usually the more interesting. This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie.

The world before us is a postcard, and I imagine the story we are writing on it.

I see that I've become a really bad correspondent. It's not that I don't think of you. You come into my thoughts often. But when you do it appears to me that I owe you a particularly grand letter. And so you end in the warehouse of good intentions: Can't do it now. Then put it on hold. This is one's strategy for coping with old age, and with death--because one can't die with so many obligations in storage. Our clever species, so fertile and resourceful in denying its weaknesses.

I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter., 1657)

Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan't make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this.

A pleasant letter I hold to be the pleasantest thing that this world has to give.

A man who gets few letters does not open one lightly.

But what can you say in a letter?

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

In a man's letters his soul lies naked.

Letters are largely written to get things out of your system.

Letters should be easy and natural.

The test of a good letter is a very simple one. If one seems to hear the other person talking as one reads, it is a good letter.