Unless the gentle inherit the earth, / There will be no earth.

The trouble is, old age is not interesting until one gets there. It's a foreign country with an unknown language to the young and even to the middle-aged.

Light is snow sifted / To an abstraction.

There was such a thing as women's work and it consisted chiefly, Hilary sometimes thought, in being able to stand constant interruption and keep your temper. . . .

It is dark now. The snow is deep blue and the ocean nearly black. It is time for some music.

I suppose real old age begins when one looks backward rather than forward

We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.