It's just as important to marry the right life as the right person.

[Gardening] is a means by which you can attain many valuable hours of solitude without being thought unsociable.

It took me forty years on earth To reach this sure conclusion: There is no Heaven but clarity, No Hell except confusion.

I can't abide cats myself, but of course we have to have one in the kitchen to deal with the mice. I insisted on getting a black one, because anything else shows the dirt so in London.

Scots are born exiles, and Scotland the perfect country to be exiled from. Do not imagine that I am running down Scotland. Far from it. ... No, what I mean is that Scotland's beauties, though undeniable, are obvious ones, easy to carry in the heart, easy even to describe to the benighted members of less fortunate races. Lakes, islands and mountains, heather and rowan, broad straths and narrow glens - these are jewels easily worn in the memory.

librarianship is one of the few callings in the world for which is it still possible to feel unqualified admiration and respect.

It seemed to her sometimes that the most important thing about marriage was not a home or children or a remedy against sin, but simply there being always an eye to catch.