It ain't what things actually are, it's all they stand for.

Before I was ten I became critical of the anthropomorphic God as interpreted in the churches. I did not warm to One thus revealed as the semblance of a bullying and mean old man who must have all his own way, be praised all the time and for attributes which were deplorable in us.

Our greatest heart-treasure is a knowledge that there is in creation an individual to whom our existence is necessary - some one who is part of our life as we are part of theirs, some one in whose life we feel assured our death would leave a gap for a day or two.

Every now and again it would be considered wholesome for me to be more with people of my own age. Demotion to such company was a sapless exile. Their inanity was insufferable.

When all is said and done, friendship is the only trustworthy fabric of the affections. So-called LOVE is a delirious inhuman state of mind: when hot it substitutes indulgence for fair play; when cold it is cruel, but friendship is warmth in cold, firm ground in a bog.

What I absorbed from autobiographies was not how to be great so much as the littleness of the great.

There are only two kinds of parents. Those who think their offspring can do nothing wrong, and those who think they can do nothing right.