... Why, it would really be being unselfish to go away and be happy for a little, because we would come back so much nicer.

Strange that the vanity which accompanies beauty - excusable, perhaps, when there is such great beauty, or at any rate understandable - should persist after the beauty is gone.

Keep quiet and say one's prayers-certainly not merely the best, but the only things to do if one would be truly happy; but, ashamed of asking when I have received so much, the only form of prayer I would use would be a form of thanksgiving.

I want to be as idle as I can, so that my soul may have time to grow.

... without it (love), without, anyhow, the capacity for it, people didn't seem to be much good. Dry as old bones, cold as stones, they seemed to become, when love was done; inhuman, indifferent, self-absorbed, numb.

There's no safety in love. You risk the whole of life. But the great thing is to risk -to believe, and to risk everything for your belief.

But it is impossible, I find, to tidy books without ending by sitting on the floor in the middle of a great untidiness and reading.