Was I the only woman in the world who, at my age - and after a lifetime of quite rampant independence - still did not quite feel grown up?

Time takes the ugliness and horror out of death and turns it into beauty.

So many of the loveliest things in England are melancholy.

Still, looking through the old volumes was soothing, because thinking of the past made the present seem a little less real.

Ham with mustard is a meal of glory

It came to me that Hyde Park has never belonged to London - that it has always been , in spirit, a stretch of countryside; and that it links the Londons of all periods together most magically - by remaining forever unchanged at the heart of a ever-changing town.

Cruel blows of fate call for extreme kindness in the family circle.