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

The sorrows we imagine are more profound and inconsolable than real life leaves us time for.

It is always one of the tragedies of any relationship, even between people sensitive to each other's moods, that the moments of emotion so rarely coincide.

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

Summer weather, like being in love,is a philosopher's stone which turns our ordinary days to gold. But not the whole day ... For it is never the whole day, never all our life which is transformed in any happiness, but only the exquisite moments.

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.

A garden is one of the few expressions of man's nature that is altogether benign.