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

What's the use of inventing a better system as long as there just aren't enough folks with sense to go around?

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.

Father sticks to it that anything that promises to pay too much can't help being risky.

Libraries are the vessels in which the seed corn for the future is stored.

On New Year's Day every calendar, large and small, has the same number of dates. But we soon learn that the years are of very different lengths.

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