That was the worst of being poor, you couldn't give the right things in sickness.

. . . every tree near our house had a name of its own and a special identity. This was the beginning of my love for natural things, for earth and sky, for roads and fields and woods, for trees and grass and flowers; a love which has been second only to my sense of enduring kinship with birds and animals, and all inarticulate creatures.

A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away.

Though it sounds absurd, it is true to say I felt younger at sixty than I felt at twenty.

I have little faith in the theory that organized killing is the best prelude to peace.

It is only by knowing how little life has in store for us that we are able to look on the bright side and avoid disappointment.

I would write of the universal, not the provincial, in human nature.... I would write of characters, not of characteristics.