The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not its growth and development.

How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it.

Early in life she had discovered the important truth that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion; and by a series of reckless escapades, half of them quite harmless, she had acquired all the privileges of a personality.

The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company.

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules.