Like all born politicians, their eye was for the main chance rather than for the argument, and they found it easier to forswear a conviction than to forego a comfort.

Borrowed illusions are better than none.

It is difficult to deal successfully, he decided, with a woman whose feelings cannot be hurt.

Nobody, not even the old, not even the despairing, wished to come to an end in time or in eternity.

The things I feared were not in the sky, but in the nature and in the touch of humanity. The cruelty of children . . . the blindness of the unpitiful - these were my terrors. But not the crash of thunder overhead, not the bolts of fire from the clouds.

I revolted from sentimentality, less because it was false than because it was cruel.

She must face her grief where the struggle is always hardest-in the place where each trivial object is attended by pleasant memories.