the urgent crowds out the essential.

The hardest of all is learning to be a well of affection, and not a fountain, to show them that we love them, not when we feel like it, but when they do.

There is a stage with people we love when we are no longer separate from them, but so close in sympathy that we live through them as directly as through ourselves. ... we push back our hair because theirs is in their eyes.

Understanding, above all, is a gift we should never offer uninvited.

happiness makes us older, less romantic, less in need of dreams. Discontent, not happiness, is the food of youth and poetry.

Every search has its own momentum. It is why a search makes such an excellent plot for a film or story.

children once settled and confident can mostly be left, it seems, to manage their difficulties without us. Only what we must do, always and unalterably, is hold their hand firmly in general goodwill, then they themselves seem to deal with their own particular troubles far better than we can.