Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

You're not sorry to go, of course. With people like us our home is where we are not... No one person in the world is necessary to you or to me.

good manners are an admission that everybody is so tender that they have to be handle with gloves.

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

He did not understand all he had heard, but from his clandestine glimpse into the privacy of these two, with all the world that his short experience could conceive of at their feet, he had gathered that life for everybody was a struggle, sometimes magnificent from a distance, but always difficult and surprisingly simple and a little sad.

When I'm with you, I don't breathe quite right.

You know I'm old in some ways-in others-well, I'm just a little girl. I like sunshine and pretty things and cheerfulness-and I dread responsibility.