We reap what we sow, but nature has love over and above that justice, and gives us shadow and blossom and fruit, that spring from no planting of ours.

For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had no childhood in it if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass . . .

Education was almost entirely a matter of luck — usually of ill-luck — in those distant days.

The most solid comfort one can fall back upon is the thought that the business of one's life is to help in some small way to reduce the sum of ignorance, degradation and misery on the face of this beautiful earth.

... one's own faults are always a heavy chain to drag through life and one can't help groaning under the weight now and then.

We are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in silence, and act as if we were not suffering.