Life was a series of messes, and one spent one's time cleaning them up; if one had any heart at all one also gave a part of one's time to cleaning up those of other people.

Human beings don't show, any more than cities at dusk, their real necessities! And yet if you looked -- past the circle of outside lights, through the street walls still standing -- into the want and emptiness within!

Jane had that happy disposition which would like to imagine that every one really wishes the well-being of his neighbour and struggles, though sometimes rather disastrously, to help him towards it.

No emergency excuses you from exercising tolerance.

To be a Jew is to be strong with a strength that has outlived persecutions. It is to be wise against ignorance, honest against piracy, harmless against evil, kind against cruelty

... not being liked has a certain virtue about it, if the reason for the dislike does not lie in yourself!

Curiosity is the only thing that really carries through time, isn't it? The creative curiosity, I mean, which fights its way into expression?