Life is large. We cannot possibly grasp the whole of it in the few years that we have to live. What is vital? What is essential? What may we profitably let go?

It costs to be a friend or to have a friend. There is nothing else in life except motherhood that costs so much. It not only costs time, affection, patience, love, but sometimes a man must even lay down his life for his friends. There is no true friendship without self-abnegation, self-sacrifice.

It is not our failures that distress us so much as our idiocies.

Life is large. We cannot possibly grasp the whole of it in the few years that we have to live. What is vital? What is essential? What may we profitably let go?

Every moment of worry weakens the soul for its daily combat.

time spent in being interrupted is not time lost. ... How do we know but that the interruption we snarl at is the most blessed thing that has come to us in long days?

Worry is spiritual nearsightedness, a fumbling way of looking at little things, and of magnifying their value.