It takes a good many years and some pretty hard knocks to make people tolerant.

Well, that was life. It was an old tree, and the old passed on. Probably they did not mind. There came a time when all sap ran slowly, and the peace of age with all things behind it merged easily into the peace of death. The difficult thing was to be young.

it's been my experience that the first few days of married life women are blind because they want to be and after that because they have to be.

The world doesn't come to the clever folks, it comes to the stubborn, obstinate, one-idea-at-a-time people.

when knowledge comes in at the door, fear and superstition fly out of the window.

every act of one's life is the unavoidable result of every act that has preceded it.

[When working on a book] I have an almost complete detachment from the world I live in, a sort of armor against distraction. I talk to people, move about, appear on the surface much as usual. But later on I have only a confused memory of what has happened during that period.