It is disastrous to own more of anything than you can possess, and it is one of the most fundamental laws of human nature that our power actually to possess is limited.

Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without.

The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only.

Custom has furnished the only basis which ethics have ever had.

The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism, but February.... Spring is too far away to comfort even by anticipation, and winter long ago lost the charm of novelty. This is the very three a.m. of the calendar.

Happiness is a kind of gratitude and vice versa.

A tragic writer does not have to believe in God, but he must believe in man.