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

children are not undeveloped versions of adult people: they are a different race of beings: they are children.

... garden books are quite unconscious that besides telling us how to turn our patch of earth into a garden, they are also expressing the way their age looks at the world, the state of their society.

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.

We love those we are happy with. We do. For how else can we know we love them, or how else define loving?

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

The sorrows of children are profound and unsuspected.