Yesterday I sat in a field of violets for a long time perfectly still, until I really sank into it - into the rhythm of the place, I mean - then when I got up to go home I couldn't walk quickly or evenly because I was still in time with the field.

Failures aren't failures if you learn something from them.

A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it.

Woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life.

For sleep, one needs endless depths of blackness to sink into; daylight is too shallow, it will not cover one.

I want first of all - in fact, as an end to these other desires - to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want, in fact - to borrow from the language of the saints - to live 'in grace' as much of the time as possible. I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense. By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony.

there is no aristocracy of grief. Grief is a great leveler.