Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call "humble" nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is a nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him.

Love, having become a god, becomes a demon.

The process of growing up is to be valued for what we gain, not for what we lose.

Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything. But no, that is not quite accurate. There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, and it is a place I can't avoid. I mean my own body. It had such a different importance while it was the body of H.'s lover. Now it's like an empty house.

Joy bursts in our lives when we go about doing the good at hand and not trying to manipulate things and times to achieve joy.

Authority exercised with humility, and obedience accepted with delight are the very lines along which our spirits live.

I begin to suspect that the world is divided not only into the happy and the unhappy, but into those who like happiness and those who, odd as it seems, really don't.