To be sorry and glad together is to be perceptive to the richness of life.

...there began to come to her a first dim realization of God's humility. Rejected by the proud in His own right by what humble means He chose to succor them; through the spirit of a child, a poor gypsy or an old man, by a song perhaps, or even it might be by the fall of a leaf or the scent of a flower. For His infinite and humble patience nothing was too small to advance His purpose of salvation and eternity was not too long for its accomplishment.

For she had discovered that as well as the evil web there was another. This too bound spirits together, but not in a tangle, it was a patterned web and one could see the silver pattern when the sun shone upon it. It seemed much frailer than the dark tangle, that had a hideous strength, but it might not be so always, not in the final reckoning. (The Child from the Sea)

Peace ... was contingent upon a certain disposition of the soul, a disposition to receive the gift that only detachment from self made possible.

The child in us is always there, you know, and it's the best part of us, the winged part that travels farthest.

There is always something particularly delightful about exceptions to a rule.

Our home, our special country, is for all of us the place where we find liberation; a very difficult word ... that tries to describe something that can't be described but is the only thing worth having.