When we force a boy to be a mediocrity in a dozen subjects we destroy his standards, perhaps for life.

When you invite a middle-aged moralist to address you, I suppose I must conclude that you have a taste for middle-aged moralizing.

We forgive, we mortify our resentment; a week later some chain of thought carries us back to the original offence and we discover the old resentment blazing away as if nothing had been done about it at all. We need to forgive our brother seventy times seven not only for 490 offences but for one offence.

We have lost the invaluable faculty of being shocked a faculty which has hitherto almost distinguished the Man or Woman from the beast or child.

It is no disparagement to the garden to say it will not fence and weed itself, nor prune its own fruit trees, nor roll and cut its own lawns...It will remain a garden only if someone does all these things to it...If you want to see the difference between [the garden's] contribution and the gardener's, put the commonest weed it grows side by side with his hoes rakes, shears, and a packet of weed killer; you have put beauty, energy, and fecundity beside dead, steril things. Just so, our 'decency and common sense' show grey and deathlike beside the geniality of love.

I have often repented of speech but hardly ever of silence.

Some journeys take us far from home. Some adventures lead us to our destiny.