You are free when you gain back yourself,” Madame Wu said. “You can be as free within these walls as you could be in the whole world. And how could you be free if, however far you wander, you still carry inside yourself the constant thought of him? See where you belong in the stream of life. Let it flow through you, cool and strong. Do not dam it with your two hands, lest he break the dam and so escape you. Let him go free, and you will be free.

Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.

Nothing in life is as good as the marriage of true minds between man and woman. As good? It is life itself.

Write a novel if you must, but think of money as an unlikely accident. Get your reward out of writing it, and try to be content with that.

Somehow I had learned from Thoreau, who doubtless learned it from Confucius, that if a man comes to do his own good for you, then must you flee that man and save yourself

We learn as much from sorrow as from joy, as much from illness as from health, from handicap as from advantage and indeed perhaps more.

Praise out of season, or tactlessly bestowed, can freeze the heart as much as blame.