Prayer did not come easily to me for I always feel that prayer is a silent things, and opening of the heart. To ask for earthly benefits, to reel out a list of requirements and expect them to be supplied is not prayer. It is putting God in the same category as an intelligent grocer.

It was curious that when we had been able to buy new clothes when we wanted we had never really appreciated them nor enjoyed them. You have to be in the position of needing things very badly indeed before you can appreciate possessing them.

...some people might think our lives dull and uneventful, but it does not seem so to us. ...it is not travel and adventure that make a full life. There are adventures of the spirit and one can travel in books and interest oneself in people and affairs. One need ever be dull as long as one has friends to help, gardens to enjoy and books in the long winter evenings.

Poverty is easy to bear if it is only temporary, easier still if it is an entirely voluntary burden.

Most people, looking back at their childhood, see it as a misty country half-forgotten or only to be remembered through an evocative sound or scent, but some episodes of those short years remain clear and brightly coloured like a landscape seen through the wrong end of a telescope.

One need never be dull as long as one has friends to help, gardens to enjoy and books in the long winter evenings.

Few of us have the necessary unselfishness to hear with gladness the talents of others extolled or to listen with patience to the successes of those whom we despise—Vivian