In a world where thrushes sing and willow trees are golden in the spring, boredom should have been included among the seven deadly sins.

I have known him nearly all my life, and I am going to marry him, so that there won't ever be a time when I shan't know him.

She long ago accepted the fact that happiness is like, swallows in spring. It may come and nest under your eaves or it may not. You cannot command it.

The perfect moment, once lost, is not easily found again.

to know perfect happiness a woman may be a mother, but must be a grandmother.

This modern craze for putting the young in positions of authority - headmasters in their thirties, bishops without a gray hair on their heads, generals who scarcely need to use a razor - ever since it took hold the world's gone steadily downhill.

...The simple little words came easily, fitting themselves to the tune that had come out of the harpsichord. It didn't seem to her that she made them up at all. It seemed to her that they flew in from the rose-garden, through the open window, like a lot of butterflies, poised themselves on the point of her pen, and fell off it on to the paper.