Taking somebody's sacrifices is like taking counterfeit money. You're only the poorer.

A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.

The richness and endless variety of human relationships ... that's what authors, even the finest and greatest, only succeed in hinting at. It's a hopeless business, like trying to dip up the ocean with a tea-spoon.

I'm as fixed in my opinion as the man who thought he was a hard-boiled egg.

I've always noticed that nobody can be single-minded who isn't narrow-minded; and I think it likely that people who aren't so cocksure what they want to do with themselves, hesitate because they have a great deal more to deal with. A nature rich in fine and complex possibilities takes more time to dispose of itself, but when it does, the world's beauty is the gainer.

There's no healthy life possible without some sensual feeling between the husband and wife, but there's nothing in the world more awful than married life when it's the only common ground.

the encounter with death is the great turning-point in the lives of those who live on.