We must picture Oxford, during World War I, not as the neomedieval paradise it would like to be, but as the military compound it was obliged to become.

Like other intellectuals, he welcomed the mindless drudgery as a refreshing change of pace.

Passion does not translate easily into good income.

Now a theist, he thought he should behave like one, even if it meant him during "the fussy, time-wasting, botheration of it all! the bells, the crowds, the umbrellas, the notices, the bustle, the perpetual arranging and organizing," and, worst of all, the hymns and organ music.

He loved his family, his friends, his writing, his painting; he knew their flaws, but they neither surprised nor embittered him.

Everyone and everything needed to be raised to its highest level – the teacher must become a mage, the husband a knight errant, the labor a hero in a sacred drama – intensified, rarefied, baptized in the turbulent waters of restlessness, curiosity, and ardor.