You'll never write anything that really satisfies you though it may satisfy other people.

War was a hellish, horrible hideous thing - too horrible and hideous to happen in the twentieth century between civilised nations.

Whenever you looked forward to anything pleasant you were sure to be more or less disappointed . . . perhaps that is true. But there is a good side to it too. The bad things don't always come up to your expectations either . . . they nearly always turn out ever so much better than you think.

Everything is new in the spring. Springs themselves are always so new, too. No spring is ever just like any other spring. It always has something of its own to be its own peculiar sweetness.

I feel as if I had opened a book and found roses of yesterday sweet and fragrant, between its leaves.

Life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it.

The woods call to us with a hundred voices, but the sea has one only — a mighty voice that drowns our souls in its majestic music. The woods are human, but the sea is of the company of the archangels.