One learns to accept the fact that no permanent return is possible to an old form of relationship; and, more deeply still, that there is no holding of a relationship to a single form. This is not tragedy but part of the ever-recurrent miracle of life and growth.

To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own.

Too many people, too many demands, too much to do; competent, busy, hurrying people - It just isn't living at all.

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

I am very fond of the oyster shell. It is humble and awkward and ugly. It is slate-colored and unsymmetrical. Its form is not primarily beautiful but functional. I make fun of its knobbiness. Sometimes I resent its burdens and excrescences. But its tireless adaptability and tenacity draw my astonished admiration and sometimes even my tears. And it is comfortable in its familiarity, its homeliness, like old garden gloves when have molded themselves perfectly to the shape of the hand. I do not like to put it down. I will not want to leave it.

People talk about love as if it were something you could give, like an armful of flowers.

When the heart is flooded with love there is no room in it for fear, for doubt, for hesitation.