The first element of greatness is fundamental humbleness (this should not be confused with servility); the second is freedom from self; the third is intrepid courage, which, taken in its widest interpretation, generally goes with truth; and the fourth-the power of love-although I have put it last, is the rarest.

My father's nature turned out no waste product; he had none of that useless stuff in him that lies in heaps near factories. He took his own happiness with him.

If you have been sunned through and through like an apricot on a wall from your earliest days, you are oversensitive to any withdrawal of heat.

The capacity to suffer varies more than anything that I have observed in human nature.

Haunted from my early youth by the transitoriness and pathos of life, I was aware that it is not enough to say "I am doing no harm," I ought to be testing myself daily, and asking myself what I am really achieving.

I do not say I was ever what I would call "plain," but I have the sort of face that bores me when I see it on other people.

She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake.