I shall pray God to send charity into this hideous world, and sympathy for the weak, and love for the unhappy and unfortunate. I shall ask Him if it is indeed His will that a child should suffer and its soul be damned for a little blemish of the body.

Knowledge is simply a kind of fuel; it needs the motor of understanding to convert it into power.

The clock is the most sacred thing in a hospital.

Children have a different convention of the fearful until they have been taught the proper things to be shocked at.

...after all, what is a planet but an island in space?

It's humiliating to be dependent, anyway, but it's still a poorer pass to have no one to depend on.

There was often a great deal of grown-up fuss that seemed disproportionate to causes.