As social beings we live with our eyes upon our reflection, but have no assurance of the tranquillity of the waters in which we see it.

The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.

A cat cares for you only as a source of food, security and a place in the sun.

The chief misery of the decline of the faculties, and a main cause of the irritability that often goes with it, is evidently the isolation, the lack of customary appreciation and influence, which only the rarest tact and thoughtfulness on the part of others can alleviate.

The thing that moves us to pride or shame is not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves but the imagined effect of this reflection upon another's mind.

If youth is the period of hero-worship, so also is it true that hero-worship, more than anything else, perhaps, gives one the sense of youth. To admire, to expand one's self, to forget the rut, to have a sense of newness and life and hope, is to feel young at any time of life.

The idea that seeing life means going from place to place and doing a great variety of obvious things is an illusion natural to dull minds.