Most of us are experts at solving other people's problems, but we generally solve them in terms of our own and the advice we give is seldom for other people but for ourselves.

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

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

Enthusiasm is a plant which grows variously in the varying soils of different natures.

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.

the large black slugs ... come out at dusk. Enormous slugs. As big as crocodiles. So huge we need a gun to shoot them. And by the end of the summer, if they go on growing, we shall have to go out in pairs together for protection.

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