. . . all that she had had, and all that she had missed, were lost together, and were twice lost in this landslide of remembered losses.

Trust your happiness and the richness of your life at this moment. It is as true and as much yours as anything else that ever happened to you.

The greatest art comes out of warmth and conviction and deep feeling, but then, very few people, even geniuses, have all that.

God does not know whether a skin is black or white, He sees only souls.

And yet, we know how fatal the pursuit of liveliness may be: it may result in ... tiresome acrobatics. ... Flashy effects distract the mind. They destroy their persuasiveness; you would not believe a man was very intent on ploughing a furrow if he carried a hoop with him and jumped through it at every other step. ... When virtuosity gets the upper hand of your theme, or is better than your idea, it is time to quit.

What we need is endless courage.

We have the bad habit, some of us, of looking back to a time - almost any time will do - when society was stable and orderly, family ties stronger and deeper, love more lasting and faithful, and so on. Let me be your Cassandra prophesying after the fact, and a long study of the documents in the case: it was never true, that is, no truer than it is now.