I never heard of anybody who admired the character of sheep. Even the gentlest human personalities in contact with them are annoyed by their lack of brains, courage and initiative, by their extraordinary ability to get themselves into uncomfortable or dangerous situations and then wait in inert helplessness for someone to rescue them.

Everyone bowed to that unwritten law of family life which ordains that, in the long run, everyone submerges his personal preference in the effort to conform to that of the member of the circle who complains most loudly and is most difficult to satisfy.

Professional psychologists seem to think that they are the only people who make sense out of human actions. The rest of us know that everybody tries to do just this. What else is gossip?

One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it's such a nice change from being young.

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

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

There is no human relationship more intimate than that of nurse and patient, one in which the essentials of character are more rawly revealed.