However long the horror continued, one must not get to the stage of refusing to think about it. To shrink from direct pain was bad enough, but to shrink from vicarious pain was the ultimate cowardice. And whereas to conceal direct pain was a virtue, to conceal vicarious pain was a sin. Only by feeling it to the utmost, and by expressing it, could the rest of the world help to heal the injury which had caused it. Money, food, clothing, shelter - people could give all these and still it would not be enough; it would not absolve them from paying also, in full, the imponderable tribute of grief.

Not that she didn't enjoy the holidays: but she always felt-and it was, perhaps, the measure of her peculiar happiness-a little relieved when they were over. Her normal life pleased her so well that she was half afraid to step out of its frame in case one day she should find herself unable to get back.

And I am a mockery, who was God before.

how much of the fun of parenthood lay in watching the children remake, with delighted wonder, one's own discoveries.

Constructive destruction is one of the most delightful employments in the world, and in civilized life the opportunities for it are only too rare.

to achieve unity without uniformity is the whole essence of the democratic way of life.

swans ... always look as though they'd just been reading their own fan-mail.