June 30 + 

There are books which are Dinosaurs⁠—Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. There are men who are Dinosaurs⁠—Balzac completing his Human Comedy, Napoleon, Roosevelt. I like them all. I like express trains and motor lorries. I enjoy watching an iron girder swinging in the air or great cubes of ice caught up between iron pincers. I must always stop and watch these things. I like everything that is swift or immense: London, lightning, Popocatepetl. I enjoy the smell of tar, of coal, of fried fish, or a brass band playing a Liszt Rhapsody. And why should those foolish Maenads shout Women’s Rights just because they burn down a church? All bonfires are delectable. Civilisation and top hats bore me. My own life is like a tame rabbit’s. If only I had a long tail to lash it in feline rage! I would return to Nature⁠—I could almost return to Chaos. There are times when I feel so dour I would wreck the universe if I could. + 